Post by Robert Waller on Aug 31, 2023 17:24:06 GMT
In the final report of the Scottish Boundary Commission, published towards the end of June 2023, they made no change to the boundaries of the seat they had originally proposed to be called Dundee East and Arbroath. But they did change its name to Arbroath and Broughty Ferry. As a glance at the map of the seat shows, this seems very reasonable as only a small section on the edge of Scotland’s fourth largest city is included
www.bcomm-scotland.independent.gov.uk/sites/default/files/Arbroath_and_Broughty_Ferry.pdf
Nevertheless, the core to the new seat really is the present Dundee East, as it already included Broughty Ferry and other communities outside Dundee’s built up area, and only a minority of around 23,000 voters come from the resent Angus – most of which forms the bulk of the new Angus & Perthshire Glens division. Therefore it is still appropriate to commend with the electoral history of Dundee East.
Dundee East is the constituency that has elected SNP MPs more often than all but one other seat. The division that covers the Outer Hebrides, known as Western Isles and then Na h-Eileanan an Iar, has chosen a Nationalist representative between 1970 and 1983 inclusive and ever since 2005. That makes a total of ten victories. In Dundee East the corresponding successes were from February 1974 to 1983 (Gordon Wilson, elected four times, and from 2005 to date (Stewart Hosie, five wins) – nine victories in all. That Dundee is a true cradle of Nationalism is also proven by the result in what was to the SNP such a key test, the 2014 independence referendum. No part of Scotland was so keen to leave the union. In Dundee city council area as a whole 57.35% voted for independence; no other area reached 54%. The turnout in Dundee was 78.8%, so 53,620 citizens voted to break away from the United Kingdom. In the December 2019 general election Hosie’s majority was the second safest of any SNP seat after Aberdeen North – though it was only 0.05% higher than that of his party colleague in Dundee West. Scotland’s fourth city is quite clearly its community most committed to fundamental constitutional change.
It should be noted, though, that far less of Dundee itself is included in this East constituency than in West – and that is going to become even more true after the boundary changes expected to come into force at the next general election, probably in 2024. There are currently only three Dundee urban wards wholly or largely included within the Dundee East Westminster division: the majority of Maryfield, East End and North East. Maryfield includes part of the city centre, including the north end of the Tay road bridge, the Victoria Docks, and now enhanced with modern redevelopments such as restaurants, heritage (HMS Unicorn maritime museum), and the Dundee Wild Shore activity centre.
Somewhat of a contrast to the vigorous city centre, both East End and North East wards are dominated by large social housing developments, their geometric shapes on the map a testament to the notions of post-war planning: Craigie and Douglas & Angus in East End, the peripheral Fintry and Whitfield in North East. 6,000 of the 14,000 dwellings in these two wards were still in the social rented sector in 2011, despite some new private housing development such as that around Ballumbie in the far north eastern section of the built up area. Some of these estates were known for the derisory shares of the vote gained by Conservative candidates in the era before the large STV wards were introduced from 2007; in 2003 for example, the Scottish Tories got 4% in Douglas, 2.7% in Whitfield, 2.1% in Longhaugh. The SNP were winning the latter wards even back then, though, not Labour. Coming up to date, in the most recent city elections in May 2022, the SNP was very much in the lead in both these wards. In East End they secured an absolute majority of first preferences, 53%, far ahead of Labour with 26% and the Tories just over 10%. North East was even more of a stronghold, with 56.5% SNP first preferences, one of the highest figures in any ward in Scotland. This was fully 30% ahead of Labour with the other parties all in single figures. What is more, the central ward, Maryfield, also saw the SNP with more than twice as much support as Labour (47% to 23%) though here the Greens did just surpass 10%.
There is one ward which is technically within the Dundee City council but is on the way out of town to the east. This is The Ferry. It includes the neighbourhood of West Ferry but more significantly Broughty Ferry, which is often considered a separate community from Dundee, even though its local authority was gobbled up as far ago as 1913. There has not been a ferry here for a very long time, but from the 19th century Broughty Ferry was, along with Dundee’s west end, the location of choice for the residences of the city’s ‘jam, jute and journalism’ barons; Dundee is still home to the headquarters of the publishers D.C.Thomson, notably conservative but perhaps known best for their cartoon creations. Its demographic makeup is still very different from the ‘Dundee’ sections of the East seat. There are over 30% in the higher managerial and professional occupations compared with under 10% in East End and North East, and only 10% in The Ferry ward in the DE socio-economic groups compared with 40% in the other two. Nearly 40% have degree level educational qualifications compared with under 20% in East End and North East. The political preferences are also different, although perhaps in a surprising way: in 2022 it was the Liberal Democrats who topped the poll in The Ferry, with nearly 35%. The SNP followed on 28%, then the Conservatives (23%) and Labour a distant fourth with a mere 10%.
There are also already nearly 20,000 voters from the Angus council area within the Dundee East constituency. These are largely in the communities further east beyond Broughty Ferry along the Tay estuary mouth and then the sea coast: Monifieth and Carnoustie. There clearly have independent characteristics as well as some Dundee commuters, including tourism; both have notable golf courses, with Carnoustie in particularly being world famous as an Open Championship host, and maybe the toughest to play of all those on the rota. Carnoustie did drop off the Open list for a while, not having an event between 2007 and 2018 because its infrastructure, such as hotel facilities, were not deemed up to scratch. It does have to be said that Carnoustie as a town lacks the attractions of St Andrews say, or even Troon. In political terms, in the Monifieth & Sidlaw ward in 2022 (the vast majority of whose electors are now in Dundee East) the SNP was first, with nearly 42%, the Conservatives second, (31%) and Labour way behind in third with 13,5%. In Carnoustie, popular Independents disturbed the pattern and took two of the three council seats available, but the SNP were clearly dominant among the parties.
Overall, the split opposition, with Labour the challengers within the city, the Conservatives in the Angus section, and the Liberal Democrats (at least at local level) in The Ferry, makes the position of the Nationalists in Dundee East appear even more invulnerable. That may well remain the case, but there are major boundary changes afoot here. The ‘Dundee’ section of the seat will be considerably reduced. Not only will the whole of the city centre Maryfield ward now be shifted to Dundee West, but half of the East End ward as well. That leaves only the North East ward clearly part of Dundee itself and clearly in this seat, plus The Ferry. The Angus section will be enhanced by the addition of both Arbroath wards, and the seat will be renamed Arbroath and Broughty Ferry. This is not, as in quite a few cases elsewhere, a rather quixotic namecheck for a small extraneous element. However it is still slightly surprising, given the widespread inflation of nomenclature in the 2023 review, that all reference to Dundee has been expunged.
Arbroath is, though, also something of an SNP stronghold, the Angus seat from which it comes only once having elected any other party this century (the Conservatives in 2017). Arbroath is by some distance the largest town in Angus (population around 24,000 in 2022), with fittingly the currently highest ranked of the county's four football teams, having been promoted to the Scottish Championship despite still having part-time players (though they haven’t beaten anyone 36-0 since 1885). Arbroath, known widely for its port and fishing industry (best known example, the haddock smokie) is large enough to contribute the majority of voters to two Angus council wards. In the most recent contests in May 2022 the SNP finished top in both on first preferences and ended with three of the seven councillors, a proportionate reward as they took 41.5% in Arbroath East & Lunan and 36.2% in Arbroath West, Letham & Friockheim. This will be an underestimation of their likely percentages in a general election due to the strength of Independent candidates in both wards (as indeed in all the Angus local elections); in fact an Independent finished second in the East ward, while the Conservatives were second in West with a very respectable 31%. Arbroath is also large enough to have a considerable range of housing types, from the solid granite ‘fishermen’s cottages’ in the centre to the inevitable respectable streets of bungalows to large social housing developments, particularly on the inland fringes of the town, from Great Michael Road in the north east to Donkey Park in the north west. Overall the East ward has over a third of its tenure in the social sector. Arbroath is as Nationalist as its history implies; the Scottish Parliament famously met here in the 14th century.
The overall electoral impact of the boundary transformation is to somewhat strengthen the Conservatives but probably to no more than second place (a position they established in Dundee East in 2017 for the first time since the 1970 general election) in a 2024 general election. As this seems likely to coincide with a national slump of greater or lesser degree for the Westminster-governing party which also continues to deny this nationalistically inclined area another referendum, the only winners seem to be the SNP. Even if the Nationalists do on occasion resemble the gang of D.C.Thomson characters led by Oor Wullie – Fat Bob, Wee Eck, Soapy Joe and Primrose Paterson? - it seems as if it will take more than the strength possessed by Desperate Dan himself to dislodge them in these parts.
2011 Census, Dundee East
(2022 Census, details not yet available)
Age 65+ 18.4% 210/650
Owner-occupied 63.2% 423/650
Private rented 12.9% 402/650
Social rented 22.9% 146/650
White 96.5% 272/650
Black 0.4% 402/650
Asian 2.5% 333/650
Managerial & professional 30.1%
Routine & Semi-routine 27.7 %
Degree level 26.4% 297/650
No qualifications 25.3% 241/650
Students 8.9% 177/650
General Election 2019: Dundee East
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
SNP Stewart Hosie 24,361 53.8 +11.0
Conservative Philip Scott 10,986 24.3 −3.1
Labour Rosalind Garton 6,045 13.4 −14.6
Liberal Democrats Michael Crichton 3,573 7.9 +4.1
Independent George Morton 312 0.7 New
SNP Majority 13,375 29.5 +14.1
2019 electorate 66,210
Turnout 45,277 68.4 +3.2
SNP hold
Swing 7.1 C to SNP
Boundary Changes
The new seat of Arbroath & Broughty Ferry will consist of
78.4% of Dundee East
36.7% of Angus
Map
www.bcomm-scotland.independent.gov.uk/sites/default/files/Arbroath_and_Broughty_Ferry.pdf
2019 Notional Results on New Boundaries (Professor David Denver for Rallings and Thrasher)
I would like also to quote within this post the highly valuable insights of ntyuk1707 from the ‘current seat’ Vote UK Almanac. He may wish to add or update these in a separate contribution, further to improve this entry.
Dundee East has a fragmented demographic profile.
The seat covers areas of high deprivation within the Dundee City Council area, with under half of the seat's electors living in Maryfield, Coldside, Strathmartine and North East wards, covering Craigie, Douglas & Angus, Whitfield, Fintry, Claverhouse and parts of Hilltown and Maryfield. These areas are among the most strongly pro-independence, pro-SNP voting in the whole of Scotland, and in the 2014 independence referendum they had an estimated Yes vote exceeding 67-33 Yes. Here you will find communities rocked by high rates of deprivation and drug deaths, seemingly more so than elsewhere in Scotland.
These communities have voted SNP in local and Scottish Parliamentary elections since the 1990's, and in UK general elections since 2010, with a majority of STV councillors in all wards belonging to the SNP and the Conservatives having had no representation in the area since 1992. Labour are the clear opposition to the SNP here, thus far in a very clear second-place behind them.
In contrast to this, in the east-end of the city is the highly affluent seaside suburb of Broughty Ferry, and adjoining that in Angus is the similarly affluent coastal suburb of Monifieth: both commuter areas with strikingly lower rates of deprivation. Traditionally, Broughty Ferry and Monifieth have been more marginally fought between the SNP and the Conservatives, with the Ferry ward having mostly elected Conservative councillors in its past. In the 2022 local elections, the Liberal Democrats surpassed the SNP and Conservatives from third place to take the most votes in the Ferry, while in Monifieth & Sidlaw ward the SNP took two Councillors, the Conservatives took one and Labour slipped out 49 votes ahead of the Conservatives to win a council seat.
Monifieth, Broughty Ferry and the villages absorbed by the Dundee East seat north of Dundee, Monifieth and Carnoustie are among the poorest areas for the SNP in both Angus and Dundee, with the Conservatives representing a challenge for the party in these communities. My estimates point to a 61-39 vote against Scottish independence in these communities in the 2014 Scottish independence referendum.
The final town in this constituency has its own rather distinctive political identity. Carnoustie is a seaside commuter town east of Dundee. The town has some affluent areas to the east and north of the high street, with higher deprivation in the west end of the town including some ex-council housing. Since the 1990's, Carnoustie has been an SNP-voting town with a higher SNP vote in the west of the town, and higher Conservative vote in the east. The town itself was rumoured and estimated to have voted very marginally in favour of Scottish independence in the 2014 referendum, on a near 50-50 split for Yes and No. It has returned a stronger vote for Independent candidates than elsewhere in Angus, who topped the poll here in both 2022 and 2017 Council elections.
Collectively, this constituency can be taken as probably the safest SNP seat in the whole of Scotland with opposition parties heavily divided between Labour forming the main opposition in more working class parts of Dundee representing close to half of the seat's electorate, and the Conservatives being the challengers in middle-class commuter suburban areas in the east and north of the seat.
Carnoustie and more working-class areas within the east-end of Dundee are strongholds for the SNP, which contributed to the constituency as a whole having voted approximately 54% in favour of Scottish independence.
Boundary changes here benefit the Conservatives, but not enough to make this near to being a winnable seat for them, adding the more deprived former fishing town of Arbroath and more Conservative-leaning rural communities of central Angus into the seat and removing the SNP-heavy East End, Strathmartine, Coldside and Maryfield wards from the seat.
The newly formed 'Dundee East and Arbroath' seat would have in fact narrowly rejected Scottish independence by around 52% No, with the majority of the seat's electors living in the Angus Council area. Nonetheless, the area still covers strongly SNP wards such as Arbroath East, North East Dundee and Carnoustie & District, with poor Conservative polling figures likely putting the seat completely out of contention for the party.
www.bcomm-scotland.independent.gov.uk/sites/default/files/Arbroath_and_Broughty_Ferry.pdf
Nevertheless, the core to the new seat really is the present Dundee East, as it already included Broughty Ferry and other communities outside Dundee’s built up area, and only a minority of around 23,000 voters come from the resent Angus – most of which forms the bulk of the new Angus & Perthshire Glens division. Therefore it is still appropriate to commend with the electoral history of Dundee East.
Dundee East is the constituency that has elected SNP MPs more often than all but one other seat. The division that covers the Outer Hebrides, known as Western Isles and then Na h-Eileanan an Iar, has chosen a Nationalist representative between 1970 and 1983 inclusive and ever since 2005. That makes a total of ten victories. In Dundee East the corresponding successes were from February 1974 to 1983 (Gordon Wilson, elected four times, and from 2005 to date (Stewart Hosie, five wins) – nine victories in all. That Dundee is a true cradle of Nationalism is also proven by the result in what was to the SNP such a key test, the 2014 independence referendum. No part of Scotland was so keen to leave the union. In Dundee city council area as a whole 57.35% voted for independence; no other area reached 54%. The turnout in Dundee was 78.8%, so 53,620 citizens voted to break away from the United Kingdom. In the December 2019 general election Hosie’s majority was the second safest of any SNP seat after Aberdeen North – though it was only 0.05% higher than that of his party colleague in Dundee West. Scotland’s fourth city is quite clearly its community most committed to fundamental constitutional change.
It should be noted, though, that far less of Dundee itself is included in this East constituency than in West – and that is going to become even more true after the boundary changes expected to come into force at the next general election, probably in 2024. There are currently only three Dundee urban wards wholly or largely included within the Dundee East Westminster division: the majority of Maryfield, East End and North East. Maryfield includes part of the city centre, including the north end of the Tay road bridge, the Victoria Docks, and now enhanced with modern redevelopments such as restaurants, heritage (HMS Unicorn maritime museum), and the Dundee Wild Shore activity centre.
Somewhat of a contrast to the vigorous city centre, both East End and North East wards are dominated by large social housing developments, their geometric shapes on the map a testament to the notions of post-war planning: Craigie and Douglas & Angus in East End, the peripheral Fintry and Whitfield in North East. 6,000 of the 14,000 dwellings in these two wards were still in the social rented sector in 2011, despite some new private housing development such as that around Ballumbie in the far north eastern section of the built up area. Some of these estates were known for the derisory shares of the vote gained by Conservative candidates in the era before the large STV wards were introduced from 2007; in 2003 for example, the Scottish Tories got 4% in Douglas, 2.7% in Whitfield, 2.1% in Longhaugh. The SNP were winning the latter wards even back then, though, not Labour. Coming up to date, in the most recent city elections in May 2022, the SNP was very much in the lead in both these wards. In East End they secured an absolute majority of first preferences, 53%, far ahead of Labour with 26% and the Tories just over 10%. North East was even more of a stronghold, with 56.5% SNP first preferences, one of the highest figures in any ward in Scotland. This was fully 30% ahead of Labour with the other parties all in single figures. What is more, the central ward, Maryfield, also saw the SNP with more than twice as much support as Labour (47% to 23%) though here the Greens did just surpass 10%.
There is one ward which is technically within the Dundee City council but is on the way out of town to the east. This is The Ferry. It includes the neighbourhood of West Ferry but more significantly Broughty Ferry, which is often considered a separate community from Dundee, even though its local authority was gobbled up as far ago as 1913. There has not been a ferry here for a very long time, but from the 19th century Broughty Ferry was, along with Dundee’s west end, the location of choice for the residences of the city’s ‘jam, jute and journalism’ barons; Dundee is still home to the headquarters of the publishers D.C.Thomson, notably conservative but perhaps known best for their cartoon creations. Its demographic makeup is still very different from the ‘Dundee’ sections of the East seat. There are over 30% in the higher managerial and professional occupations compared with under 10% in East End and North East, and only 10% in The Ferry ward in the DE socio-economic groups compared with 40% in the other two. Nearly 40% have degree level educational qualifications compared with under 20% in East End and North East. The political preferences are also different, although perhaps in a surprising way: in 2022 it was the Liberal Democrats who topped the poll in The Ferry, with nearly 35%. The SNP followed on 28%, then the Conservatives (23%) and Labour a distant fourth with a mere 10%.
There are also already nearly 20,000 voters from the Angus council area within the Dundee East constituency. These are largely in the communities further east beyond Broughty Ferry along the Tay estuary mouth and then the sea coast: Monifieth and Carnoustie. There clearly have independent characteristics as well as some Dundee commuters, including tourism; both have notable golf courses, with Carnoustie in particularly being world famous as an Open Championship host, and maybe the toughest to play of all those on the rota. Carnoustie did drop off the Open list for a while, not having an event between 2007 and 2018 because its infrastructure, such as hotel facilities, were not deemed up to scratch. It does have to be said that Carnoustie as a town lacks the attractions of St Andrews say, or even Troon. In political terms, in the Monifieth & Sidlaw ward in 2022 (the vast majority of whose electors are now in Dundee East) the SNP was first, with nearly 42%, the Conservatives second, (31%) and Labour way behind in third with 13,5%. In Carnoustie, popular Independents disturbed the pattern and took two of the three council seats available, but the SNP were clearly dominant among the parties.
Overall, the split opposition, with Labour the challengers within the city, the Conservatives in the Angus section, and the Liberal Democrats (at least at local level) in The Ferry, makes the position of the Nationalists in Dundee East appear even more invulnerable. That may well remain the case, but there are major boundary changes afoot here. The ‘Dundee’ section of the seat will be considerably reduced. Not only will the whole of the city centre Maryfield ward now be shifted to Dundee West, but half of the East End ward as well. That leaves only the North East ward clearly part of Dundee itself and clearly in this seat, plus The Ferry. The Angus section will be enhanced by the addition of both Arbroath wards, and the seat will be renamed Arbroath and Broughty Ferry. This is not, as in quite a few cases elsewhere, a rather quixotic namecheck for a small extraneous element. However it is still slightly surprising, given the widespread inflation of nomenclature in the 2023 review, that all reference to Dundee has been expunged.
Arbroath is, though, also something of an SNP stronghold, the Angus seat from which it comes only once having elected any other party this century (the Conservatives in 2017). Arbroath is by some distance the largest town in Angus (population around 24,000 in 2022), with fittingly the currently highest ranked of the county's four football teams, having been promoted to the Scottish Championship despite still having part-time players (though they haven’t beaten anyone 36-0 since 1885). Arbroath, known widely for its port and fishing industry (best known example, the haddock smokie) is large enough to contribute the majority of voters to two Angus council wards. In the most recent contests in May 2022 the SNP finished top in both on first preferences and ended with three of the seven councillors, a proportionate reward as they took 41.5% in Arbroath East & Lunan and 36.2% in Arbroath West, Letham & Friockheim. This will be an underestimation of their likely percentages in a general election due to the strength of Independent candidates in both wards (as indeed in all the Angus local elections); in fact an Independent finished second in the East ward, while the Conservatives were second in West with a very respectable 31%. Arbroath is also large enough to have a considerable range of housing types, from the solid granite ‘fishermen’s cottages’ in the centre to the inevitable respectable streets of bungalows to large social housing developments, particularly on the inland fringes of the town, from Great Michael Road in the north east to Donkey Park in the north west. Overall the East ward has over a third of its tenure in the social sector. Arbroath is as Nationalist as its history implies; the Scottish Parliament famously met here in the 14th century.
The overall electoral impact of the boundary transformation is to somewhat strengthen the Conservatives but probably to no more than second place (a position they established in Dundee East in 2017 for the first time since the 1970 general election) in a 2024 general election. As this seems likely to coincide with a national slump of greater or lesser degree for the Westminster-governing party which also continues to deny this nationalistically inclined area another referendum, the only winners seem to be the SNP. Even if the Nationalists do on occasion resemble the gang of D.C.Thomson characters led by Oor Wullie – Fat Bob, Wee Eck, Soapy Joe and Primrose Paterson? - it seems as if it will take more than the strength possessed by Desperate Dan himself to dislodge them in these parts.
2011 Census, Dundee East
(2022 Census, details not yet available)
Age 65+ 18.4% 210/650
Owner-occupied 63.2% 423/650
Private rented 12.9% 402/650
Social rented 22.9% 146/650
White 96.5% 272/650
Black 0.4% 402/650
Asian 2.5% 333/650
Managerial & professional 30.1%
Routine & Semi-routine 27.7 %
Degree level 26.4% 297/650
No qualifications 25.3% 241/650
Students 8.9% 177/650
General Election 2019: Dundee East
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
SNP Stewart Hosie 24,361 53.8 +11.0
Conservative Philip Scott 10,986 24.3 −3.1
Labour Rosalind Garton 6,045 13.4 −14.6
Liberal Democrats Michael Crichton 3,573 7.9 +4.1
Independent George Morton 312 0.7 New
SNP Majority 13,375 29.5 +14.1
2019 electorate 66,210
Turnout 45,277 68.4 +3.2
SNP hold
Swing 7.1 C to SNP
Boundary Changes
The new seat of Arbroath & Broughty Ferry will consist of
78.4% of Dundee East
36.7% of Angus
Map
www.bcomm-scotland.independent.gov.uk/sites/default/files/Arbroath_and_Broughty_Ferry.pdf
2019 Notional Results on New Boundaries (Professor David Denver for Rallings and Thrasher)
| SNP | 26550 | 50.9% |
| Con | 15773 | 30.3% |
| Lab | 5321 | 10.2% |
| LD | 4168 | 8.0% |
| Oth | 312 | 0.6% |
| | ||
| Majority | 10777 | 20.7% |
I would like also to quote within this post the highly valuable insights of ntyuk1707 from the ‘current seat’ Vote UK Almanac. He may wish to add or update these in a separate contribution, further to improve this entry.
The seat covers areas of high deprivation within the Dundee City Council area, with under half of the seat's electors living in Maryfield, Coldside, Strathmartine and North East wards, covering Craigie, Douglas & Angus, Whitfield, Fintry, Claverhouse and parts of Hilltown and Maryfield. These areas are among the most strongly pro-independence, pro-SNP voting in the whole of Scotland, and in the 2014 independence referendum they had an estimated Yes vote exceeding 67-33 Yes. Here you will find communities rocked by high rates of deprivation and drug deaths, seemingly more so than elsewhere in Scotland.
These communities have voted SNP in local and Scottish Parliamentary elections since the 1990's, and in UK general elections since 2010, with a majority of STV councillors in all wards belonging to the SNP and the Conservatives having had no representation in the area since 1992. Labour are the clear opposition to the SNP here, thus far in a very clear second-place behind them.
In contrast to this, in the east-end of the city is the highly affluent seaside suburb of Broughty Ferry, and adjoining that in Angus is the similarly affluent coastal suburb of Monifieth: both commuter areas with strikingly lower rates of deprivation. Traditionally, Broughty Ferry and Monifieth have been more marginally fought between the SNP and the Conservatives, with the Ferry ward having mostly elected Conservative councillors in its past. In the 2022 local elections, the Liberal Democrats surpassed the SNP and Conservatives from third place to take the most votes in the Ferry, while in Monifieth & Sidlaw ward the SNP took two Councillors, the Conservatives took one and Labour slipped out 49 votes ahead of the Conservatives to win a council seat.
Monifieth, Broughty Ferry and the villages absorbed by the Dundee East seat north of Dundee, Monifieth and Carnoustie are among the poorest areas for the SNP in both Angus and Dundee, with the Conservatives representing a challenge for the party in these communities. My estimates point to a 61-39 vote against Scottish independence in these communities in the 2014 Scottish independence referendum.
The final town in this constituency has its own rather distinctive political identity. Carnoustie is a seaside commuter town east of Dundee. The town has some affluent areas to the east and north of the high street, with higher deprivation in the west end of the town including some ex-council housing. Since the 1990's, Carnoustie has been an SNP-voting town with a higher SNP vote in the west of the town, and higher Conservative vote in the east. The town itself was rumoured and estimated to have voted very marginally in favour of Scottish independence in the 2014 referendum, on a near 50-50 split for Yes and No. It has returned a stronger vote for Independent candidates than elsewhere in Angus, who topped the poll here in both 2022 and 2017 Council elections.
Collectively, this constituency can be taken as probably the safest SNP seat in the whole of Scotland with opposition parties heavily divided between Labour forming the main opposition in more working class parts of Dundee representing close to half of the seat's electorate, and the Conservatives being the challengers in middle-class commuter suburban areas in the east and north of the seat.
Carnoustie and more working-class areas within the east-end of Dundee are strongholds for the SNP, which contributed to the constituency as a whole having voted approximately 54% in favour of Scottish independence.
Boundary changes here benefit the Conservatives, but not enough to make this near to being a winnable seat for them, adding the more deprived former fishing town of Arbroath and more Conservative-leaning rural communities of central Angus into the seat and removing the SNP-heavy East End, Strathmartine, Coldside and Maryfield wards from the seat.
The newly formed 'Dundee East and Arbroath' seat would have in fact narrowly rejected Scottish independence by around 52% No, with the majority of the seat's electors living in the Angus Council area. Nonetheless, the area still covers strongly SNP wards such as Arbroath East, North East Dundee and Carnoustie & District, with poor Conservative polling figures likely putting the seat completely out of contention for the party.
