Hypothetical 2023 Review with 600 seats

[nyx]

An interesting counterfactual scenario to consider, considering it could quite feasibly have happened.

Northern Ireland: 16.29 seats - would have 16. (-2)
Wales (excluding Anglesey): 28.54 seats- would have 29. (-10)
Scotland (excluding Orkney/Shetland/Western Isles): 50.57 seats- would have 51. (-6)
England (excluding Wight): 499.61 seats- would have 499.

Regional allocation in England:
North East 24.55 seats- would have 24. (-5)
North West 67.64 seats- would have 68. (-7)
Yorks/Humber 49.86 seats- would have 50. (-4)
West Midlands 52.40 seats- would have 52. (-7)
East Midlands 43.75 seats- would have 44. (-2)
Eastern 56.34 seats- would have 56. (-2)
London 69.76 seats- would have 70. (-3)
South East 81.99 seats- would have 82. (-1)
South West 53.32 seats- would have 53. (-2)

Quota 79,560 (acceptable range 75,583 - 83,538)

By the Saint Lague method, the final seat allocated was very close between the North West and North East. North West only barely got its 68th seat. It is conceivable that the small size of the North East region would make drawing an acceptable map within this quota tricky (the average seat in the North East would need 81,375 electors), in which case one can imagine the Commission may have deemed that difficulty sufficient reason to use a cross-regional-boundary seat.

Subdividing the North East...
Northumberland - 3.13 quotas. 3 seats (-1)
Tyne and Wear 10.25 quotas. 10 seats (-2)
County Durham 4.95 quotas. 5 seats (-1)
Teesside 6.22 quotas. 6 seats (-1).

At least theoretically doable. My best attempt, requiring only one ward split, is this. The ward that's split is Dunston Hill and Whickham East.



Bits of it are imperfect but honestly I expected a lot worse given how tight the quota is.

Others feel free to do the same thing for other regions if you feel like it- I don't expect to have the patience to fill the entire map!

[Pete Whitehead]

I'm reminded again I've yet to post up all my 750 constituency maps. When I've done that I'll have a crack at this

[nyx]

Turns out the South East is surprisingly difficult despite seemingly being one of the easier ones with only losing one seat.

Kent - 16.65 quotas - 17 seats (=)
East Sussex - 7.75 quotas - 8 seats (=)
West Sussex - 8.12 quotas - 8 seats (=)
Hampshire - 17.01 quotas - 17 seats (-1)
Surrey - 10.81 quotas - 11 seats (=)
Berkshire - 7.98 quotas - 8 seats (=)
Oxfordshire - 6.28 quotas - 6 seats (=)
Buckinghamshire - 7.38 quotas - 7 seats (=)

This theoretically works, but has the problem that several counties are extremely tight for drawing within the 5% threshold. Hampshire and West Sussex are at least clearly fine.

If we were to merge Oxfordshire with Buckinghamshire, we'd get 13.66 quotas - 14 seats (+1)
And a merged Kent and East Sussex would be 24.40 quotas - 24 seats (-1), and with the Surrey seats being slightly on the small side, it would be easy enough for a Surrey seat to grab a bit of Kent if necessary. This seems to me the most sensible way of doing it, as it allows Berkshire to remain intact.

It's still tight though, and a struggle to draw. One would think at least Hampshire should be easy, but it's not, because in the Portsmouth area the numbers prevent most logical combinations from working. Good luck to anyone trying the South East...

[andrewteale]

I had a go a no-split ward North West and managed it. It's dire, so I'll post it here so you can have a laugh.

Cumbria (4.90 quotas) can stand alone for 5 seats:



Carlisle (75868)
Penrith and Solway (76141)
Whitehaven and Workington (78432)
Barrow and Furness (79751)
Westmorland and Lonsdale (79525)

Lancashire (14.00 quotas) can stand alone for 14 seats:



Lancaster and Morecambe (81699)
North Lancashire (77767)
Blackpool North and Fleetwood (82687)
Blackpool South (80998)
Fylde (75801)
Pendle and Bowland (79501)
Burnley and Nelson (82443)
Hyndburn and Whalley (80257)
Rossendale and Darwen (77369)
Blackburn (76323)
Chorley (80293)
Preston (80240)
South Ribble (78124)
West Lancashire (80541)

Cheshire, Greater Manchester and Merseyside have to be combined because if you treat them separately you end up one seat short. I was aiming for splits of:

Bolton/Bury/Manchester/Salford: 11.00 quotas - 11 seats
CWAC/Halton/Knowsley/St Helens: 7.84 quotas - 8 seats
Liverpool/Sefton: 6.89 quotas - 7 seats
Cheshire E/Trafford: 5.94 quotas - 6 seats
Stockport/Tameside: 4.94 quotas - 5 seats
Wirral: 3.08 quotas - 3 seats
Wigan: 3.00 quotas - 3 seats
Oldham: 2.05 quotas - 2 seats
Rochdale: 2.02 quotas - 2 seats
Warrington: 2.00 quotas - 2 seats

This ... didn't quite happen.



2 seats for Rochdale:
Rochdale (79901) - unchanged
Heywood and Middleton (80669) - unchanged

2 seats for Oldham:
Oldham East and Saddleworth (80098)
Oldham West (82732)

3 seats for Wigan:
Wigan (75607) - unchanged
Makerfield (83362)
Leigh (79416)

11ish seats for Bolton, Bury, Manchester and Salford:
Bolton West (81545)
Bolton North (76808)
Bury (75652)
Radcliffe and Farnworth (81984)
Eccles and Worsley (82706)
Salford (77088)
Manchester Blackley and Prestwich (81092)
Manchester Central (76509) - includes Broughton ward and Blackfriars/Trinity ward from Salford
Manchester East (81123)
Manchester Chorlton (82938)
Manchester Wythenshawe (76763) - includes Heald Green for extra pitchfork points

5ish seats for Stockport and Tameside - this is a right mess without ward splits:
Ashton and Stalybridge (80634)
Stockport North and Droylsden (77063)
Stockport East and Hyde (76768)
Stockport West (76179)
Stockport South (79679) - includes Handforth



6ish seats for Cheshire East and Trafford:
Stretford and Urmston (81863)
Altrincham (81540)
Tatton (80783) - includes Lymm from Warrington and Shakerley ward from CWAC to get vaguely sensible boundaries
Macclesfield (75881) - unchanged
Congleton (77018)
Crewe and Nantwich (77707)

2ish seats for Warrington
Warrington North (79853)
Warrington South (79069) - loses Lymm, gains Daresbury and eastern Runcorn

8ish seats for CWAC, Halton, Knowsley and St Helens
Ellesmere Port and Neston (83073) - includes Heswall
Chester (82783)
Winsford (77777) - includes two wards from Cheshire East
Eddisbury (76433)
Halton and Halewood (82601)

...



Knowsley (79695) - there is not room for all of Huyton in this seat
St Helens North (76082) - unchanged
St Helens South and Whiston (77099) - unchanged

3ish seats for Wirral
Wallasey (77529)
Birkenhead (76799)
Wirral South (79371)

7 seats for Liverpool and Sefton
Liverpool Garston (77727)
Liverpool Wavertree (77095)
Liverpool Riverside (77335)
Liverpool West Derby (77180)
Bootle and Fazakerley (77470)
Sefton Central (80593)
Southport (81007)

[islington]

Mar 10, 2024 0:26:13 GMT nyx said:

Turns out the South East is surprisingly difficult despite seemingly being one of the easier ones with only losing one seat.

Kent - 16.65 quotas - 17 seats (=)
East Sussex - 7.75 quotas - 8 seats (=)
West Sussex - 8.12 quotas - 8 seats (=)
Hampshire - 17.01 quotas - 17 seats (-1)
Surrey - 10.81 quotas - 11 seats (=)
Berkshire - 7.98 quotas - 8 seats (=)
Oxfordshire - 6.28 quotas - 6 seats (=)
Buckinghamshire - 7.38 quotas - 7 seats (=)

This theoretically works, but has the problem that several counties are extremely tight for drawing within the 5% threshold. Hampshire and West Sussex are at least clearly fine.

If we were to merge Oxfordshire with Buckinghamshire, we'd get 13.66 quotas - 14 seats (+1)
And a merged Kent and East Sussex would be 24.40 quotas - 24 seats (-1), and with the Surrey seats being slightly on the small side, it would be easy enough for a Surrey seat to grab a bit of Kent if necessary. This seems to me the most sensible way of doing it, as it allows Berkshire to remain intact.

It's still tight though, and a struggle to draw. One would think at least Hampshire should be easy, but it's not, because in the Portsmouth area the numbers prevent most logical combinations from working. Good luck to anyone trying the South East...

On those numbers it doesn't work even in theory because if we're keeping the 5% rule Bucks at 7.38 is too big for 7. And the trouble with combining it with Oxon for 14 is that you then have to save a seat elsewhere by an unnatural shotgun marriage of Kent and E Sussex.

So I'd have a go at treating Oxon alone for 6 - very tight, but the wards are nice and small - and linking Berks and Bucks, where the boundary is reasonably porous, for 15. If E Sx is a struggle at 7.75 for 8 it would be better to borrow a few wards from W Sx rather than cross the border with Kent.

[The Bishop]

Mar 10, 2024 9:30:58 GMT andrewteale said:

I had a go a no-split ward North West and managed it. It's dire, so I'll post it here so you can have a laugh

Well your Cumbria proposals at least are quite a bit better than what the zombie review originally came up with.

[John Chanin]

600 is just a re-run of the 2 zombie reviews that we all had such fun/trouble with. Why not try something new like 500, or 450? If it's good enough for the Americans with four times our population....And surely we don't need all these MPs with nothing to do except plot and whinge?

[islington]

Well, this is more 'proof of concept' than a realistic proposal, but here's Oxon, entitlement 6.28, divided into 6 seats all within range and with no ward splits.

It needs more work, obviously, and a single ward split in Oxford would ease matters considerably. But it's all legal.

Edited to add: Actually this is also legal and slightly less horrible despite the orphan wards.

Witney - 83376

Henley (or perhaps S Oxon) - 83532 (only 6 short of the max)

Oxford (with bits nibbled off) - 83175

Banbury - 83366 (actually not bad)

Abingdon - 82837 (the smallest of the six)

Bicester - 83455 (83 short)

[islington]

Now with added Berks & Bucks - all contiguous and legal. I threw in Spelthorne from Surrey because I don't know what else to do with it; at 0.92 quota it can't stand alone. This leaves the rest of Surrey with 9.89 for 10 seats, which should be fine.

Berks & Bucks mostly not too bad. I don't like the way Bracknell snakes westward but I found this area tricky and the alternatives, at least the ones I found, were worse. 

Again, naturellement, no ward splits.

[J.G.Harston]

Mar 10, 2024 12:46:58 GMT John Chanin said:

600 is just a re-run of the 2 zombie reviews that we all had such fun/trouble with. Why not try something new like 500, or 450? If it's good enough for the Americans with four times our population....And surely we don't need all these MPs with nothing to do except plot and whinge?

The USA also has state governments. You're comparing Westminster with DC but forgetting California/Texas/Delaware/Maine/etc.

[islington]

Quick stab at 17 seats for Hants -

[YL]

Well it's a starting point.



One split ward in each of Sheffield, Kirklees and Bradford, two in Wakefield and three in Leeds.

[islington]

16 seats for Sussex.

I did reinforce an E Sussex seat with a couple of W Sussex wards but this wasn't so much to balance the electorates as to avoid crossing the sacred but invisible line that separates Hove from Brighton.

[islington]

And 10 for Surrey (sans Spelthorne).

[islington]

And finally Kent.

[edgbaston]

Mar 11, 2024 20:25:47 GMT islington said:

And finally Kent.

5 orphan wards :/

[bjornhattan]

Mar 11, 2024 19:41:35 GMT YL said:

Well it's a starting point.



One split ward in each of Sheffield, Kirklees and Bradford, two in Wakefield and three in Leeds.

Infinitely better than me - I had a reasonable solution for South and East Yorkshire (which I paired - Goole and Thorne actually works really well), and found North Yorkshire a doddle, but it all came apart in West Yorkshire. Wakefield paired with Selby to produce four quite nice seats with a single ward split in Pontefract, Kirklees is pretty close to minimum change, but beyond that it quickly became painful. Calderdale having 1.89 quotas especially!

I think I ended up with about six or seven splits in Leeds, at which point I just gave up. Fitting Calderdale, Bradford, and Leeds (which have 13.65 quotas) into 14 seats was never going to be easy - though I had found quite a neat minimal change pattern for North Yorkshire (including retaining an unchanged Richmond) so didn't want to cross that boundary. I didn't think to have a Selby-Goole seat though that is eminently reasonable, and overall it's easier to just endorse your map than spend any more hours of my life splitting Leeds every which way...

[Khunanup]

Mar 10, 2024 22:06:26 GMT islington said:

Quick stab at 17 seats for Hants -

Most of it looks ok, but that's engineered via two dire seats (the Petersfield centred one and the amorphous blob that surrounds Basingstoke and the rest).

When you get to a certain point you just have to split Basingstoke to accommodate seats that have any modicum of internal sense. Even with 650 seats that's going to have to happen in a review or two.

[Davıd Boothroyd]

That 'North Hampshire with Basingstoke as the hole in the doughnut' constituency seems to systematically avoid any sizeable town because it would have to be split.

Was interested by what looks like an attempt to recreate the 1983-97 Romsey and Waterside constituency only without Romsey.

[nyx]

Here's my attempt at Hampshire.

Shoving Paulsgrove into Fareham isn't ideal, and creating a Portsmouth North and Waterlooville seat like this would require an extremely precise ward split in Portsmouth (between them, the two Portsmouth seats would only be 11 electors below the maximum, so that's the margin being worked with unless you accept a second ward split)

But it does manage to keep most seats reasonably intact and the new creations like Eastleigh and Romsey aren't too bad.