South West Wiltshire

[stb12]

South West Wiltshire

[alderman]

Southwark Councillor and Cabinet Member Eve Akoto has been selected as the Labour Candidate.

[overthehill]

Electoral calculus predicts a 66% chance of a Labour gain here - mind blowing!

[batman]

That's ridiculous. But then, as Oliver Hardy might say, Ridiculous is Electoral Calculus's middle name.

[overthehill]

Jun 6, 2024 20:58:13 GMT batman said:

That's ridiculous. But then, as Oliver Hardy might say, Ridiculous is Electoral Calculus's middle name.

Would be interested in the perspective of anyone with local knowledge

[alderman]

Have been told by a contact in the Trowbridge Labour Party that Reform appeared to be polling well even before the Farage about turn. The Lib Dems, competitive in local elections. are very weak and being squeezed hard here. It is assumed their resources are being deployed in the Chippenham and Devizes & Melksham seats which are much more likely targets for them. South West Wiltshire is most definitely a Tory v Labour scrap.

[John Chanin]

There are a number of seats like this across the country - predominantly urban, quite working class, relatively low owner-occupation, but not economically depressed - where you would expect a significant Labour vote, but in practice there is little or no Labour presence at all. Most of these places are in the south.

So it would be no surprise if Labour boosts its vote a lot here, given that the Liberal Democrats have gone for a target seat strategy, and this isn't one of them. Similar factors apply in neighbouring Salisbury, although that is a little better off.

[islington]

Jun 7, 2024 9:24:46 GMT John Chanin said:

There are a number of seats like this across the country - predominantly urban, quite working class, relatively low owner-occupation, but not economically depressed - where you would expect a significant Labour vote, but in practice there is little or no Labour presence at all. Most of these places are in the south.

So it would be no surprise if Labour boosts its vote a lot here, given that the Liberal Democrats have gone for a target seat strategy, and this isn't one of them. Similar factors apply in neighbouring Salisbury, although that is a little better off.

Exactly.

The potential Labour vote in seats like this usually fails to materialize because in normal circumstances it's obvious that the party has no chance so a lot of Labour-minded voters either sit the election out or vote LibDem in the (usually vain) hope of unseating the Tory.

But in an election where Labour are riding high in national polls and the LDs are languishing at 9%, the conditions are in place for Labour to poll its full strength and assuming there are no massive polling shifts during the campaign I expect a significant number of Labour gains in seats like this across the south (although I stress that I am not making a prediction for SW Wilts specifically).

[evergreenadam]

Jun 7, 2024 9:40:03 GMT islington said:

Jun 7, 2024 9:24:46 GMT John Chanin said:

There are a number of seats like this across the country - predominantly urban, quite working class, relatively low owner-occupation, but not economically depressed - where you would expect a significant Labour vote, but in practice there is little or no Labour presence at all. Most of these places are in the south.

So it would be no surprise if Labour boosts its vote a lot here, given that the Liberal Democrats have gone for a target seat strategy, and this isn't one of them. Similar factors apply in neighbouring Salisbury, although that is a little better off.

Exactly.

The potential Labour vote in seats like this usually fails to materialize because in normal circumstances it's obvious that the party has no chance so a lot of Labour-minded voters either sit the election out or vote LibDem in the (usually vain) hope of unseating the Tory.

But in an election where Labour are riding high in national polls and the LDs are languishing at 9%, the conditions are in place for Labour to poll its full strength and assuming there are no massive polling shifts during the campaign I expect a significant number of Labour gains in seats like this across the south (although I stress that I am not making a prediction for SW Wilts specifically).

It certainly feels like there is sufficient momentum against the Tories for them to lose some of their seats in the south outside London for the first time, but am not making any specific predictions.

In previous General Elections we noticed that the likes of Wycombe, Worthing and Basingstoke were edging towards Labour and in those cases it is now a question of if not now, when.

[bjornhattan]

I think the difficulty here for Labour is that Trowbridge only accounts for about a third of the seat. Labour will almost certainly win there (possibly by a quite comfortable margin), and it is also quite fertile territory for Reform. But is it enough to counteract the rest of the seat?

The remainder of the seat consists of four areas, of roughly equal size: Westbury, Warminster, "suburban" villages, and genuinely rural country. I imagine Westbury will have a reasonable Labour vote due to its more industrial nature, while Warminster would generally be considered much more Tory (but if military voters turn against them, perhaps less so?). The villages may have some Labour votes, but going by local elections, even those like Hilperton which are closest to the towns have minimal votes for anyone other than the Tories and local independent candidates.

My gut feeling is that Labour will come very close here - perhaps within 5% - but will just fall short.

[Pete Whitehead]

Labour did come very close to winning the old Westbury seat in 1945 (and were not too far off in 1950, 1951 and 1966). Of course the seat did include Melksham then which would have been a heavy Labour area then, but its fundamentally the same constituency.

[overthehill]

Thanks for replies

Sunak’s D Day issues could almost be seen as a calculated act of self harm in a seat like this!

Perhaps the reality has changed since I posted on this seat last night !

[WestCountryRadical]

SOPN

Evelyn Akoto (Lab)
Thomas Culshaw (Ind)
Garry Irvin (Ref)
Andrew Murrison (Con)
Bret Palmer (LD)
James Ward (Ind)
Fay Whitfield (Grn)

[overthehill]

Labour now 10/11 favourites to win this seat. Conservatives on 11/10. Interesting times

[alderman]

Jun 26, 2024 13:28:26 GMT overthehill said:

Labour now 10/11 favourites to win this seat. Conservatives on 11/10. Interesting times

Given recent revelations, how far can we trust betting odds? The Labour price could be depressed by Tories betting on their candidate to lose?

[carlton43]

Jun 28, 2024 10:17:51 GMT alderman said:

Jun 26, 2024 13:28:26 GMT overthehill said:

Labour now 10/11 favourites to win this seat. Conservatives on 11/10. Interesting times

Given recent revelations, how far can we trust betting odds? The Labour price could be depressed by Tories betting on their candidate to lose?

You can nearly always trust the betting odds implicitly because they are produced by hard-headed experts and have to be correct to avoid loss.

They are entirely about money and the running of the book and may often bear no relation at all to the political contest which is irrelevant to the bookies and about which they need to know nothing at all, and in which they have no interest at all until the declaration, when they see if they have just balanced the book, made a bit of profit or a lot of profit. 

[greenchristian]

Jun 28, 2024 10:17:51 GMT alderman said:

Jun 26, 2024 13:28:26 GMT overthehill said:

Labour now 10/11 favourites to win this seat. Conservatives on 11/10. Interesting times

Given recent revelations, how far can we trust betting odds? The Labour price could be depressed by Tories betting on their candidate to lose?

You can't trust them to give you a good indication of the result. You can trust them to be a good indicator of the balance of bets placed.

[heslingtonian]

Any idea why the Conservative vote held up much better here than in some of the Somerset seats just over the border? The anti-Conservative swing was also lower here and Salisbury at 14% than the other Wiltshire seats - East Wiltshire 20%, Melksham & Devizes 18% and Chippenham 21%. Any idea why?

[greenhert]

Jul 31, 2024 20:47:00 GMT heslingtonian said:

Any idea why the Conservative vote held up much better here than in some of the Somerset seats just over the border? The anti-Conservative swing was also lower here and Salisbury at 14% than the other Wiltshire seats - East Wiltshire 20%, Melksham & Devizes 18% and Chippenham 21%. Any idea why?

There are 2 reasons for this: one, like in 1997, the opposition was divided, and two, the seat's outright owner-occupation rate is considerably above average and its education levels are lower than much of the south west.

[nyx]

Jul 31, 2024 20:51:47 GMT greenhert said:

Jul 31, 2024 20:47:00 GMT heslingtonian said:

Any idea why the Conservative vote held up much better here than in some of the Somerset seats just over the border? The anti-Conservative swing was also lower here and Salisbury at 14% than the other Wiltshire seats - East Wiltshire 20%, Melksham & Devizes 18% and Chippenham 21%. Any idea why?

There are 2 reasons for this: one, like in 1997, the opposition was divided, and two, the seat's outright owner-occupation rate is considerably above average and its education levels are lower than much of the south west.

Surely the other reason is simply that Labour, not the Lib Dems, were in second place in 2019. Harder for Labour to win seats like this than it is for the Lib Dems to.