carlton43
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Post by carlton43 on Aug 3, 2015 13:39:30 GMT
That list has some good names. But Vale of Glamorgan is NOT a new one. So, are there others that are not new? I don't want to see a reduction to 600-seats but if there is then it will pose hours of innocent enjoyment for us along the lines set out by Pete above. There will need to be sterling efforts by party managers to avoid having seats 'made' to suit one party interest. I am warming to the new slightly larger seats for technical and pleasure reasons alone. The basic idea is extremely duff. Specifically including "the" is new. Petty, perhaps, pedantic, perhaps, but there we go. No! There we don't go. Adding an article is a piece of usage and does not alter a name. The Vale of Glamorgan is NOT a new name any more than The Yorkshire Moors is a new name for Yorkshire Moors or The Arsenal is a new name for Arsenal. It is NOT a new name......period!
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maxque
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Post by maxque on Aug 3, 2015 13:46:27 GMT
Looking at the maps of the Wirral on the Pretty maps thread just now led me to muse (not for the first time) that a simple swapping of Upton for Heswall would have left Esther McVey sitting on a majority of several thousands still and then to recall that the 'zombie review' had proposed something on similar lines. Esther McVey is a 'victim' of the abandonment of these boundary changes - Mary Mcleod is another, Angie Bray (possibly) another. Others such as Sadiq Khan, Tom Brake Gavin Barwell and Gareth Thomas were probably saved by it. My question is, has there been any meaningful attempt at working out how the proposed constituencies would have voted? (not in detail but who would have won in each case). I have seen some figures bandied about of what the make up of the HoC would have been had the boundary changes gone ahead but not sure what these are based on - I suspect they may not be based on reliable data. If it has not been done this might be a (moderately) worthwhile project for me to embark on I've done a bit of number crunching in London to produce the following
| Con | Lab | LD | 2010 Actual | 28 | 38 | 7 | 2010 Notional | 26 | 34 | 8 | 2015 Actual | 27 | 45 | 1 | 2015 Notional | 29 | 39 | 0 |
Only 3 seats are so close that they could plausibly have gone the other way (Wanstead & Woodford (con hold with a majority of c.250), Ealing Central (Lab gain with a majority of c.100) and Harrow West (Con gain with a majority of c. 400) ) Clearly, it wasn't Conservatives trying to cheat their way into winning an election...
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Aug 3, 2015 14:09:54 GMT
No it clearly wasn't as they didn't draw the boundaries nor can they possibly have foreseen the detailed outcome - you would have to be very naive and or paranoid to think they could. Of course it is a travesty of democracy that 43% of the London vote should yield Labour less than 60% of the seats but it is swings and roundabouts and you will see for example in Greater Manchester where both Bolton West and Bury North would have been Labour that the net effect is the opposite. The main reason that overall the reduction in MPs would hurt Labour more is that currently there are areas that are grossly overrepresented (principally Wales) where Labour happen to be strong. Anyway this whole argument has been done to death and I'm not personally a supporter of either reducing the size of the Commons nor the wwy in which its being done, but the whole 'gerrymandering' mantra from LAbour supporters is lame and tedious bollocks
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Aug 3, 2015 15:44:48 GMT
You've got to look at a lot more than the raw figures. You cannot say the boundary changes favour thje Tories in London in any and all circumstances. It happens that on the configuration that occurred in May they would have done. Now if you were to apply a swing of 3.25% from conservative to Labour (which would bring the parties neck and neck nationally) on the current setup, on UNS that would deliver one extra seat to Labour in London (Croydon Central). On the zombie boundaries they would gain five additional seats (Balham & Tooting, Brentford & Isleworth, Finchley & Golders Green, Harrow West and Wanstead & Woodford). They would also be very close to winning Harrow East. So if the parties were neck and neck nationally the seat count in London would become 44 Lab 24 Con compared with 45 Lab 27 Con 1 LD on the current boundaries. At that point it naturally becomes clear that Labour cheated...
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Post by andrewteale on Aug 3, 2015 19:13:27 GMT
No it clearly wasn't as they didn't draw the boundaries nor can they possibly have foreseen the detailed outcome - you would have to be very naive and or paranoid to think they could. Of course it is a travesty of democracy that 43% of the London vote should yield Labour less than 60% of the seats but it is swings and roundabouts and you will see for example in Greater Manchester where both Bolton West and Bury North would have been Labour that the net effect is the opposite. The main reason that overall the reduction in MPs would hurt Labour more is that currently there are areas that are grossly overrepresented (principally Wales) where Labour happen to be strong. Anyway this whole argument has been done to death and I'm not personally a supporter of either reducing the size of the Commons nor the wwy in which its being done, but the whole 'gerrymandering' mantra from LAbour supporters is lame and tedious bollocks If I recall correctly the zombie review's change to Bury North was to move Bradshaw ward into it. Surely that would have increased the Tory majority? Or were there other changes?
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Post by kevinlarkin on Aug 3, 2015 19:49:01 GMT
No it clearly wasn't as they didn't draw the boundaries nor can they possibly have foreseen the detailed outcome - you would have to be very naive and or paranoid to think they could. Of course it is a travesty of democracy that 43% of the London vote should yield Labour less than 60% of the seats but it is swings and roundabouts and you will see for example in Greater Manchester where both Bolton West and Bury North would have been Labour that the net effect is the opposite. The main reason that overall the reduction in MPs would hurt Labour more is that currently there are areas that are grossly overrepresented (principally Wales) where Labour happen to be strong. Anyway this whole argument has been done to death and I'm not personally a supporter of either reducing the size of the Commons nor the wwy in which its being done, but the whole 'gerrymandering' mantra from LAbour supporters is lame and tedious bollocks If I recall correctly the zombie review's change to Bury North was to move Bradshaw ward into it. Surely that would have increased the Tory majority? Or were there other changes? In the revised recommendations the only change to Bury North was to add Unsworth ward where Labour were 459 votes ahead of the Conservatives at local level in May.
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Aug 3, 2015 22:15:49 GMT
To furnish a bit more detail about the London situation: The changes East if the River Lea seemed superficially, on the basis of the 2010 results, to help the Conservatives as the creation of Wanstead and Woodford gave them a third seat in Redbridge/Waltham Forest while Labour Walthamstow was abolished. However the addition of much of Walthamstow to Chingford made that seat marginal while Ilford North was left on a knife edge and W & W would hardly have been the banker it was in its previous incarnations. The situation in the 2015 landscape is that both Chingford and Ilford North would be comfortably held by Labour while Wanstead & Woodford itself now sits on a knife edge, so while Labour and the Conservatives retain the same number of seats in the area, the Conservatives see a very safe seat replaced by an ultra-marginal. In terms of personnel, all the sitting Labour MPs in the area could be accommodated with Stella Creasey presumably taking her chances in Chingford. I'd guess Lee Scott would have moved to Wanstead & Woodford where he would have had a superior claim and he would still be with us while IDS would have either stood and fallen in Chingford or (more likely) sought safer pastures further afield.
On the west bank of the Lea the six seats covering Tower Hamlets, Hackney, Tottenham and Edmonton are reduced to five. Hackney South & Shoreditch is technically the seat which would have disappeared but with the retirement of Andy Love in Edmonton all the remaining Labour MPs could have been accommodated. Likewise in Central London, the abolition of Westminster North need not have led to the discomfiture of a sitting MP as the greater part of it is joined with parts of Holborn & St Pancras where Frank Dobson stood down leaving Karen Buck free to carry on as MP for Camden Town & Regents Park. The situation in outer West London wouldn't have been dealt with so easily as Feltham & Heston is scattered to the four winds. In fact wards from that seat provide a slight majority of the electorate of the Southall & Heston seat so it is Ealing Southall which is the seat effectively abolished. In any event one of Seema Malhotra and Virendra Sharma would have found themselves on the chicken run. South of the river, two further Labour seats abolished happened to be represented by MPs who stood down in 2015 (Tessa Jowell in Dulwich & West Norwood and Nick Raynesford in Greenwich & Woolwich).
In addition to the abolished seats there are seven seats which would have flipped party - 3 from Conservative to Labour and 3 the other way and 1 from Lib Dem to Conservative. Of the Conservative seats we have discussed Chingford. Croydon Central translated into Croydon East would be a Labour seat and was already a notional Labour seat in 2010. Gavin Barwell may have seen the writing on the wall and followed the town centre into Croydon South where Richard Ottaway's retirement created a vacancy. Jane Ellison would also have already seen Battersea translated into a Labour seat (as Battersea & Vauxhall) and may well have opted to follow Balham into Balham & Tooting which is moved in the opposite direction. This would have created more of a problem for Saddiq Khan who may well have fancied his chances of making a notional gain in his home area but would have failed. The two other 2015 Labour seats which would have flipped are both in Middlesex - Brentford & Isleworth would have been held by the Tories while Harrow West would have been a gain (a'shock' gain presumably).
All usual caveats apply of course. My calculations are based on votes actually cast in May 2015 and in several cases people may have voted differently in a different seat with different candidates and different dynamics. For example in Wanstead & Woodford the component wards come from four different seats - one fiercely contested marginal, one safe Tory seat and two safe Labour seats. It is obvious that the level of campaigning activity would have been different in the areas which are currently in safe seats had they been part of a marginal seat - to what effect is anyone's guess. IN Ealing Central my figures produce a Labour lead even smaller than they actually enjoyed in Ealing Central and Acton. With a margin that small I can't be sure of the winner and its quite possible the Tories would have been ahead in this area. Of course had the seat been fought on these boundaries, the dynamics would have changed in the way described above. While the Tories were ahead in the areas coming in from Ealing Central & Acton and Ealing Southall, Labour would have been well ahead in the area coming from Ealing North. It is well known that Stephen Pound enjoys a substantial personal vote (and there is strong evidence for it) so that it is not difficult to imagine there being at least 50 voters in Cleveland ward who voted for him but who may have voted Conservative in this different context. My hunch therefore is strongly that Ealing Central would be a Conservative seat but notional results cannot take account of these kind of factors
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Post by kevinlarkin on Aug 3, 2015 23:02:13 GMT
IN Ealing Central my figures produce a Labour lead even smaller than they actually enjoyed in Ealing Central and Acton. With a margin that small I can't be sure of the winner and its quite possible the Tories would have been ahead in this area. Of course had the seat been fought on these boundaries, the dynamics would have changed in the way described above. While the Tories were ahead in the areas coming in from Ealing Central & Acton and Ealing Southall, Labour would have been well ahead in the area coming from Ealing North. It is well known that Stephen Pound enjoys a substantial personal vote (and there is strong evidence for it) so that it is not difficult to imagine there being at least 50 voters in Cleveland ward who voted for him but who may have voted Conservative in this different context. My hunch therefore is strongly that Ealing Central would be a Conservative seat but notional results cannot take account of these kind of factors It would have been very close under the proposed boundaries, but you have to also consider Southfield. The local Liberal vote here would have mostly switched to the Conservatives at the general election.
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Post by Arthur Figgis on Aug 3, 2015 23:15:01 GMT
Jane Ellison would also have already seen Battersea translated into a Labour seat (as Battersea & Vauxhall) and may well have opted to follow Balham into Balham & Tooting which is moved in the opposite direction. This would have created more of a problem for Saddiq Khan who may well have fancied his chances of making a notional gain in his home area but would have failed. Ellison lives in Balham ward (one road away from the road I mainly grew up in, which I didn't know until recently- not entirely as I haven't really lived there for about 9 years), so you're probably correct.
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Aug 3, 2015 23:23:52 GMT
It would have been very close under the proposed boundaries, but you have to also consider Southfield. The local Liberal vote here would have mostly switched to the Conservatives at the general election. I'm not sure I understand your point but I think I do. As you know I have worked out notional results for all the wards in London so the way I am approaching this is by aggregating those ward results. So in that sense I am not considering Southfield but the nine wards which would make up Ealing Central. I think that what you're saying is that I may have understated the Conservative vote in Southfield which would mean I am overstating the Conservative vote in the parts of Ealing Central & Acton being considered here. Of course this is possible which is why I always qualify any result with a margin of less than about 500 or 1%. For what its worth I have the Conservatives strongly ahead in Southfield (by about 900 votes) - whether that is enough or too much I don't know. You may remember that I mentioned that in calculating the notional results for London seats I used 2012 GLA election results as well as 2014 local election results to form my base data so that would tend to show up the underlying Conservative strength in the area much more than just using the local election results would have done. It is precisely because of wards like Southfield that I did this.
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iain
Lib Dem
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Post by iain on Aug 4, 2015 0:04:11 GMT
Where would we have been closest to winning a seat? Kingston?
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Aug 4, 2015 8:05:31 GMT
Kingston & Surbiton just yes - just over an 8% Tory lead there and a fraction higher in Carshalton & Coulsdon. Sutton & Cheam and Hampton would both have been around 10-11%. The discussion I had about people voting differently in a different context is surely relevant here though. The three Hounslow wards produced a derisory Lib Dem vote and a strong Labour vote. Its reasonable to assume that at least a portion of the Labour vote would have moved tactically to vote for Vince Cable when finding themselves in this different situation - indeed some who voted Tory might have voted for him. So while on my figures Kingston is the closest, I suspect that had the election actually been fought on these boundaries, Hampton would have been closer.
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Aug 4, 2015 21:26:33 GMT
West Midlands county: Down from 28 seats to 25 (25.5 to be precise with parts of Solihull joining with Kenilworth in Warwickshire so three seats lost in total in West Midlands and Warwickshire). One seat is lost from Birmingham - not entirely clear which one. Hodge Hill and Selly Oak disappear as names and their electorates don't form the major element in any new seat. Harborne is a new name for an old seat (Edgbaston) while Edgbaston is an old name for a new seat. Since Labour hold all the 9 current Birmingham seats (not including SC) the game of musical chairs would have left one of them without a seat - sure that would have made for some interesting selection contests. The 8 seats remaining would all have been Labour still. Northfield and Erdington & Castle Bromwich would be a bit more vulnerable to the Tories while Yardley would be much safer for Labour. One seat lost in Walsall/Wolverhampton - pretty clear that Wolverhampton NE is the abolished seat here. Meanwhile Walsall South is translated into a Tory seat (though quite narrowly) so Labour down 2 net here and Tories up 1. Finally one seat lost in the Sandwell and Dudley areas. Again it isn't all that clear which seat is abolished here - basically the two 'Dudley' seats and two 'West Bromwich' seats are reconfigured as three seats. Of these Dudley West would have been won by the Tories (though more narrowly than they won in Dudley South) while the other two seats are safely Labour. The remaining three seats in the area - Smethwick (Warley), Halesown & Rowley Regis and Stourbridge - are recognisably the same seats as those currently in existence and the Conservatives would retain their two seats there but again more narrowly than on current boundaries. Aldridge, Brownhills & Bloxwich and Meriden would also see the Conservative majorities sharply reduced by the boundary changes though they are large enough to withstand this and remain comfortably in the Tory column.
In summary the West Midlands county loses three seats, all Labour held while one Labour seat is turned into a Tory seat. So the current 21 Lab 7 Con would have become 17 Lab 8 Con. However Walsall South is only narrowly gained while all the existing Conservative seats with the exception of Sutton Coldfield become more marginal while some potential target seats such as Birmingham Edgbaston (Harborne) and Wolverhampton SW (West) become more difficult for them.
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Aug 4, 2015 22:14:31 GMT
Merseyside: Down from 15 seats to 13 with one seat disappearing from Liverpool (Walton) and one from the Wirral (Wirral South, though part of it forms a major element of the famous Mersey Banks seat along with parts of West Cheshire). Obviously Labour down 2 as a result of this reduction in seats. 11 of the 13 remaining seats are safely Labour - Wirral West in its transformation to Wirral Deeside becomes more or less a safe Tory seat as discussed up thread. Finally Southport is also flipped over to the Tories with the addition of part of Formby. So an unmitigated advantage to the Tories here gaining two seats where they had none and Labour down net 3 as 14 Lab 1 LD becomes 11 Lab 2 Con
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Aug 4, 2015 22:43:57 GMT
There are posters on this forum here today who weren't around to experience Mersey Banks first time round. I hope they're given the chance to feel as we did back then.
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Khunanup
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Portsmouth Liberal Democrats
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Post by Khunanup on Aug 5, 2015 13:40:14 GMT
There are posters on this forum here today who weren't around to experience Mersey Banks first time round. I hope they're given the chance to feel as we did back then. Especially when one's home village was involved in that monstrosity...
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Aug 8, 2015 20:13:30 GMT
Greater Manchester down just 1 seat from 27 to 26 (although two seats are not wholly within the Met county). Fairly clear that the abolished seat is Denton & Reddish. Several of the seats are completely unchanged and most others see only minor changes with the addition or subtraction of one or two wards with all the remaining seats being recognisably the same seats as what went before, unlike the kind of complete reconfiguration that occurs in much of the West Midlands or West Yorkshire. Nevertheless even minor changes are enough to move both Bolton West and Bury North into the Labour column. In between these two, Bolton NE is the most heavily redrawn seat in the area as it moves out into Lancashire to become Bolton North & Darwen. The removal of Breighmet and Halliwell takes almost the whole of the Labour majority with them. I haven't worked out notional figures for Lancashire yet but I'd be surprised if the Tories could have won Rossendale & Darwen as easily as they did without being ahead by a fair amount in the Darwen section therefore I'm guessing this would have flipped the other way. This means that Labour lose one through abolition and one from redistricting but gain two back from redistricting with the Tories gaining one and losing two. Net result Lab 22 (nc) Con 4 (-1)
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Aug 8, 2015 20:38:05 GMT
South Yorkshire also down 1 seat from 14 to 13 with the Doncaster and Rotherham seats being fundamentally unchanged and a major redrawing of the boundaries of Barnsley and Sheffield. Sheffield Brightside & Hillsborough is effectively the seat to be abolished but the fate of Hallam is the point of interest here. Hallam would lose Dore & Totley and gain Stocksbridge and Penistone West wards to become Sheffield Hallam & Penistone. Labour would have been ahead of the Lib Dems by around 5,000 in May and while had the seat been fought on these boundaries Nick Clegg might have got more tactical Tory votes from the newly added areas there are not enough of these in total to have made the difference. The net outcome then is that the Lib Dems would have lost yet another seat and their leader.
West Yorkshire loses 2 seats to go down from 22 to 20. There is a major configuration of many of the seats with a number of them bearing tenuous links to predecessor seats but effectively the two seats which disappear are Bradford South and Pudsey. Of the remaining 6 Tory seats, 4 remain fundamentally the same (Calder Valley, Colne Valley, Elmet, Keighley). Morley & Outwood is heavily split but the main element forms the main element of the new Batley & Morley seat which would have been comfortably Labour (the successor to Batley & Spen is Spen Valley, also Labour). Meanwhile Shipley loses its best Tory wards and takes a chunk of Bradford West which moves it narrowly into the Labour column. There is some compensation for the Tories elsewhere though. The addition of Queensbury ward is enough to put Halifax in the Tory column while the new seat of Otley would also be theirs. This if anything is the succesor to Leeds NW but contains only half that seat and that the far more Tory half which is joined by strongly Tory wards from other seats. At the same time the southern half is joined by Labour wards in a safe new Leeds North seat. For all these changes Labour remain on 14 seats as now with the Tories going down one to 6 and the Lib Dems down 1 to zero
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Aug 8, 2015 20:56:34 GMT
To complete the Yorkshire region there is only the boundary changes in Humberside to consider as North Yorkshire would be virtually unchanged. Humberside would have lost one seat with Haltemprice & Howden being abolished. Almost half that seat joins with parts of Hull west & Hessle to become Hull West & Haltemprice which would have narrowly been Conservative held in 2015 so it is actually Labour who lose out from the arrangement on this occasion (though they could easily win the seat in more optimal circumstances). Worse for Labour is the reconfiguration of the Grimsby and Cleethorpes seats which splits both in two and rearranges them as Grimsby South & Cleethorpes and Grimsby North & Barton. Both would be more winnable for Labour than the current Cleethorpes seat but both would have been Tory in 2015. This means that the outcome of 5 Con 5 Lab which occurred on the current boundaries in 2015 would have been 6 Con 3 Lab on these new boundaries. This offsets the net Tory loss in West Yorkshire so that they end up with the same total number of seats on either set of boundaries (19). Labour are down 2 from 33 to 31 and the Lib Dems down 2 from 2 to 0
The Lib Dems incidentally would have lost all four of their seats which I have looked at so far. They will certainly hold at least three of the remainder and probably the fourth, but it does seem apparent that they were more well advised in voting down these boundary changes than they probably realised at the time
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Aug 8, 2015 22:44:43 GMT
Meanwhile Shipley loses its best Tory wards and takes a chunk of Bradford West which moves it narrowly into the Labour column. Aaaaaaarrrrrrghhhhhh!
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