Hexham

[john07]

Jul 21, 2024 15:50:51 GMT aargauer said:

Jul 21, 2024 13:36:55 GMT john07 said:

I had a look at the Estimated Ward Level Winners (Health warnings apply) and Hexham ended up with seven wards each for Labour and Conservative. Even the four Ponteland Wards split two each!

Labour

Hayden and Hadrian
Haltwhistle
Corbridge
Bywell
Hexham Central
Ponteland West
Ponteland North

Conservative

Bellingham
Humshaugh
South Tynedale
Hexham West
Stocksfield and Broomhaugh
Ponteland South and Heddon
Ponteland East and Stannington

Health warnings indeed.

There is no way the Tories won Stocksfield or anything in Hexham and likewise Labour aren't going to win anything in ponteland, ever.

I'd also be amazed if Labour won corbridge.

I have in-laws in Ponteland and know it fairly well so I would tend to agree. The problem is that the Labour votes must be coming from somewhere?

Labour took 46.3% of the vote compared to 19.0% in 2010. This was not simply a seat where the Tory vote evaporated and Labour took the seat with a small percentage of the vote.

I suspect that there are loads of constituencies where it wi be a puzzle where the Labour vote came from.

[batman]

I think most of the above analyses are basically right. Prudhoe & the Newcastle ward are Labour, Hexham would probably have voted Labour although possibly one ward didn't, Corbridge & Ponteland are Tory, Haltwhistle is marginal. I can see why Labour has never won here before though I think Labour would have definitely won in 1997 had they been able to contest the seat on these boundaries.

[aargauer]

Jul 21, 2024 16:37:20 GMT john07 said:

Jul 21, 2024 15:50:51 GMT aargauer said:

Health warnings indeed.

There is no way the Tories won Stocksfield or anything in Hexham and likewise Labour aren't going to win anything in ponteland, ever.

I'd also be amazed if Labour won corbridge.

I have in-laws in Ponteland and know it fairly well so I would tend to agree. The problem is that the Labour votes must be coming from somewhere?

Labour took 46.3% of the vote compared to 19.0% in 2010. This was not simply a seat where the Tory vote evaporated and Labour took the seat with a small percentage of the vote.

I suspect that there are loads of constituencies where it wi be a puzzle where the Labour vote came from.

I don't think it's that much of a mystery.

The will have won Prudhoe, which is essentially outer Gateshead by miles.
Hexham and Newcastle exurbs by a distance.

They probably won Haydon Bridge and Haltwistle, which are basically isolated and poor.

[jamie]

Jul 21, 2024 16:37:20 GMT john07 said:

Labour took 46.3% of the vote compared to 19.0% in 2010. This was not simply a seat where the Tory vote evaporated and Labour took the seat with a small percentage of the vote.

I suspect that there are loads of constituencies where it wi be a puzzle where the Labour vote came from.

The specific difficulty with Hexham is that the last council elections were in 2021 and Labour have underperformed in the area the past few council elections anyways. In almost all other areas there have been local elections in 2022/2023/2024, which even if surprising do provide a clear indication of where the vote is distributed. The swing since 2021 is obviously very large which makes universal swing even more fraught. 

[mattbewilson]

Hexham is a breeding ground for labour party organisers. Yorkshire has a regional organiser from Hexham, a trainee organiser from Hexham and chief of staff from Hexham.

I've interviewed with at least three Hexham born party activists.

[bjornhattan]

I suspect that northern Ponteland (essentially the original and rather ordinary village as opposed to the very opulent Darras Hall) will have voted Labour or at least been close. But that wouldn't show up in ward level estimates as this area is split between North and East (and both contain parts of Darras Hall as well as more remote villages).

I'm also pretty confident Labour would have won Haltwhistle - it is the sort of place which saw a disproportionate swing to the Tories in 2019 but even then it was probably more Labour friendly than the seat as a whole. Haydon and Hadrian is probably the "tipping point" ward which is most in line with the seat overall, so I think that was marginally Labour too. Bellingham will then be narrowly Tory - probably the town itself voted Labour along with the poorer villages like Kielder and Otterburn, but I think they'd have been just about outvoted by the extremely remote rural areas that will have stayed Conservative.

[aargauer]

Jul 22, 2024 11:41:10 GMT bjornhattan said:

I suspect that northern Ponteland (essentially the original and rather ordinary village as opposed to the very opulent Darras Hall) will have voted Labour or at least been close. But that wouldn't show up in ward level estimates as this area is split between North and East (and both contain parts of Darras Hall as well as more remote villages).

I'm also pretty confident Labour would have won Haltwhistle - it is the sort of place which saw a disproportionate swing to the Tories in 2019 but even then it was probably more Labour friendly than the seat as a whole. Haydon and Hadrian is probably the "tipping point" ward which is most in line with the seat overall, so I think that was marginally Labour too. Bellingham will then be narrowly Tory - probably the town itself voted Labour along with the poorer villages like Kielder and Otterburn, but I think they'd have been just about outvoted by the extremely remote rural areas that will have stayed Conservative.

I would have thought that Bellingham itself, Kielder and Otterburn would be some of the most tory bits of the seat?

Certainly the equivalents in North Northumberland like Wooler, full of farm boys with 12 fingers, are some of the most conservative bits of that seat.

My brother got married in Otterburn as it happens. I think its reasonably pleasant. Kielder feels like the end of the world. There's not really anywhere in England as remote as this. Not even in the moors.

Many state secondary school kids from this part of Northumberland board.

[Sibboleth]

The impact of the boundary changes here will have been significant: 12.5% of its electorate live in Newburn and Throckley, transferred over from Newcastle North.

[aargauer]

Jul 22, 2024 12:07:46 GMT Sibboleth said:

The impact of the boundary changes here will have been significant: 12.5% of its electorate live in Newburn and Throckley, transferred over from Newcastle North.

Surprising really that the tory vote share was up on 1997. Granted the lack of a reform candidate is largely responsible for this.

I didn't expect the tories to come quite as close as they did here, and do as badly in North Northumberland. That really surprises me.

[East Anglian Lefty]

It's worth noting that the Conservatives seem to have done unusually badly with farmers this time and agriculture is a significant employer in the more remote parts of the seat.

[thirdchill]

Jul 22, 2024 12:11:59 GMT aargauer said:

Jul 22, 2024 12:07:46 GMT Sibboleth said:

The impact of the boundary changes here will have been significant: 12.5% of its electorate live in Newburn and Throckley, transferred over from Newcastle North.

Surprising really that the tory vote share was up on 1997. Granted the lack of a reform candidate is largely responsible for this.

I didn't expect the tories to come quite as close as they did here, and do as badly in North Northumberland. That really surprises me.

Am less surprised, I think the nature of the conservative vote prior to 2024 in this seat is a bit different to that in North Northumberland.

In general it's more of a small-c conservative vote which is fairly wealthy and not particularly ideological and the Conservative MPs for the constituency in the past mostly reflect that.

The conservative vote here seems less susceptible to Reform on the whole (Reform would not have polled as well here as in North Northumberland) and contains more people who have voted Conservative consistently rather than switching between parties compared to North Northumberland.

[bjornhattan]

Jul 22, 2024 14:32:01 GMT thirdchill said:

Jul 22, 2024 12:11:59 GMT aargauer said:

Surprising really that the tory vote share was up on 1997. Granted the lack of a reform candidate is largely responsible for this.

I didn't expect the tories to come quite as close as they did here, and do as badly in North Northumberland. That really surprises me.

Am less surprised, I think the nature of the conservative vote prior to 2024 in this seat is a bit different to that in North Northumberland.

In general it's more of a small-c conservative vote which is fairly wealthy and not particularly ideological and the Conservative MPs for the constituency in the past mostly reflect that.

The conservative vote here seems less susceptible to Reform on the whole (Reform would not have polled as well here as in North Northumberland) and contains more people who have voted Conservative consistently rather than switching between parties compared to North Northumberland.

North Northumberland doesn't really have a concentrated area of wealth in the way this seat does. There are certainly reasonably well to do parts of that seat, but nothing like the concentration of managerial workers and higher professionals seen in large parts of Hexham. While the relationship between wealth and voting intention isn't as strong as it once was, it's certainly the case that areas like Darras Hall will remain resolutely Tory - and there just isn't a Darras Hall equivalent in the north of the county.

[Sibboleth]

A solid core based around agriculture was rather dramatically less useful in this election than most, yes.

[certain]

I spent quite a lot of time here, always in Callerton & Throckley where I had been agent, apart from one foray into Heddon and one to Morpeth. I think Guy Opperman knew he was doomed. He was knocking on some of the same doors as us. For what it's worth, the word was in the Labour campaign that we were close, but not ahead, in Ponteland.

We were based in Throckey church on polling day at the invitation of the vicar. That was certainly a first for me. We had to clear up assiduously ready for inspection by the churchwarden at 11.00pm.

[bjornhattan]

I've done another demographics model to estimate ward and OA level results for this election (and am reasonably happy with what it's come out with - at least in seats like this where the Lib Dems weren't a factor). So you can add another set of estimates to the list:

Very Likely Conservative
Ponteland West
South Tynedale
Longhorsley
Bellingham
Humshaugh

Probably Conservative
Ponteland South with Heddon
Ponteland East and Stannington

Highly Marginal
Hexham West
Haydon and Hadrian
Ponteland North
Corbridge

Probably Labour
Stocksfield and Broomhaugh
Bywell

Very Likely Labour
Haltwhistle
Prudhoe North
Hexham East
Hexham Central with Acomb
Prudhoe South
Callerton and Throckley

The four highly marginal wards were all estimated by my model to have margins tighter than 2% (the boundary between "probably" and "very likely" is 10%). Hexham West is predicted as very narrowly Conservative (by just 18 votes), while the other three were narrowly Labour. In practice I wouldn't be sure about calling any of these, though my instinct is that Hexham West and Haydon & Hadrian were Labour and Corbridge and Ponteland North Tory, all marginally.

Also worth noting that these ward level estimates often disguise significant internal variations. South Tynedale is a good example - most of the ward is very rural and I have the Conservatives 20-30% ahead there, but Allendale is a lot closer and the town there is Labour by about 10%. Haydon and Hadrian is divided between Haydon Bridge (very Labour) and rural areas (all Conservative except Gilsland and central Henshaw). And even the two strongest wards for each party had parts which my model believes favoured the other, albeit narrowly: Stamfordham village in Ponteland West for Labour and Woolsington village in Callerton and Throckley for the Conservatives.

[aargauer]

That looks better than anything else I've seen.

[Arthur Figgis]

Have been pub crawling in Hexham today, and it’s noticeably more Geordie (as opposed to Northumbrian) to the last time I was here in 2014. 6 pubs so far (5 Guide pubs plus the Spoons), got chatting to locals in most the pubs, 50% of them were Geordies who had moved here in the last few years.

[Foggy]

Jul 26, 2024 12:35:49 GMT bjornhattan said:

Also worth noting that these ward level estimates often disguise significant internal variations.

Well, that's unitarisation for you!