This post features, or will feature, a region-by-region run through of the key constituencies and their prospects for the British election, which is being held overnight our time with the business end of the count occurring tomorrow morning. The maps identify Conservative marginals as “primary” if they would fall to Labour on the uniform national swing predicted by the polls, which broadly point to a Conservative vote of 34% (down three on the last election), Labour on 33% (up five) and the Liberal Democrats on 9% (down fourteen). “Secondary” marginals are those which might be expected to fall if Labour won a majority, which I’ve crudely drawn at the 12% point on the swing-o-meter. I’m playing Liberal Democrat seats by ear according to the betting markets in identifying them either as safe or under threat from this party or that.
I’ll be adding regions to the guide progressively as I complete them. And what better place to start than:
London
Six seats in London that would fall from Conservative to Labour on the uniform swing indicated in the polling, but no real prospects for Labour beyond that, the margin in Ilford North being 11.5%. I’ve heard it said that the swing is expected to be slightly above par in London, but an Ashford poll during the campaign had the Conservatives with a four-point lead in Croydon Central. With respect to the Liberal Democrat seats, Labour are very short-priced favourites in Brent Central and favourites in Hornsey and Wood Green. Other Liberal Democrat seats are at least endangered, but betting markets favour them in each case.
South-East
This area is ground zero for the Ukip insurgency, being home to the two seats they have won at by elections, Clacton and Rochester & Strood, and the seat being targeted by party leader Nigel Farage, Thanet South. It’s also good territory for the Greens, encompassing their solitary seat of Brighton Pavilion.
The strength of both parties is causing Labour headaches, and could certainly cost them what should otherwise have been an easy win in Thurrock, which the Conservatives won last time on the tightest of margins. Southhampton Itchen is the only seat anywhere identified as a potential Conservative gain for Labour, partly due to a retiring sitting member, but also because Ukip is believed to be biting into the Labour vote (the number for it has failed to show up on my map tomorrow, but it’s the one bordering Eastleigh to the west).
The Greens vote could also cost Labour potential gains in the two seats neighbouring Brighton Pavilion, Hove and Brighton Kemptown, although they are the favourites in both cases. Seats Labour is clearly favoured to gain from the Conservatives are Hove, Brighton Kemptown and Hastings & Rye, and the betting is fairly tight in Milton Keyes South.
The Conservatives are short-priced favourites to win Portsmouth South from the Liberal Democrats, and rated competitive but behind in Eastbourne. The markets rate the Liberal Democrats a better chance than Labour to unseat the Conservatives in Watford, for what reason I’m not sure.
South-West
This region is the greatest area of strength for the Liberal Democrats, and much depends on the extent to which they can dig in here. The Conservatives are clearly favoured to win St Austell & Newquay, Taunton Deane, Somerton & Frome, Wells, Mid Dorset & Poole and Chippenham, and it would appear to be very close in St Ives, North Cornwall, North Devon and Torbay. Labour is expected to win Bristol West from the Liberal Democrats, despite determined efforts from the Greens. The only seats the Liberal Democrats are clearly favoured to retain are Yeovil, Bath, Thornbury & Yate and Cheltenham. As for the few Conservative-Labour contests, Labour is strongly favoured to gain Plymouth, Sutton & Devonport, it’s expected to go down to the wire in South Swindon, and the Conservatives are slightly favoured in Gloucester.
Midlands/East Anglia
Moving up to the central band of England, we find rock solid Labour industrial areas and equally safe Conservative countryside, with marginal seats tending to crop out where the two blur together. Labour is very strongly favoured to win Sherwood, City of Chester, Broxtowe, North Warwickshire, Wolverhampton South West and Corby, and moderately favoured in Cannock Chase, Erewash, Amber Valley, Lincoln and Bedford. Crewe & Nantwich, Nuneaton, Halesowen & Rowley Regis, Northampton North, Ipswich and Norwich North are thought to be lineball, while Labour holds out some hope in High Peak, Cleethorpes, Loughborough, Worcester, Peterborough, Great Yarmouth.
There are only a few Liberal Democrats seats here, but one of them is Nick Clegg’s seat of Sheffield Hallam, where polling long found him struggling to hold off Labour, although more recent polling has been more favourable to him. Labour is also expected to gain Norwich South, but the Conservatives are favourites in Cambridge, and Birmingham Yardley is lineball. Next door to Birmingham Yardley, the Conservatives are short-priced favourites to unseat the Liberal Democrats in Solihull.
The North
Around Liverpool and Manchester, we see a repeat of the pattern in the Midlands where marginals seats fill the cracks between Labour-voting industrial and Conservative-voting country areas, although elsewhere in the north the distinctions are more pronounced. The betting markets favour Labour to win six seats from the Conservatives throughout the region: Wirral West, Bury North, Dewsbury, Lancaster & Fleetwood, Morecambe & Lunesdale and Carlisle. The Conservatives are rated as having the edge in South Ribble, Rossendale & Darwen, Pendle, Colne Valley, Elmet & Rothwell and Blackpool North & Cleveleys, while Keighley and Pudsey are down to the wire.
The expectation is that the Liberal Democrats will be hit hard in the north as voters react against their involvement in the coalition by returning to Labour, who are thought all but certain to gain Bradford East, Burnley, Manchester Whitington and Redcar, with the Liberal Democrats given a slight edge in Leeds North East. There are a further three seats where the Liberal Democrats are under pressure from the Conservatives, with the markets favouring the Liberal Democrats in Southport, the Conservatives in Berwick upon Tweed, and evenly split in Cheadle. The wild card constituency in the region is Bradford West, which George Galloway won from Labour for his Respect party at a by-election in March 2012. His re-election bid would appear to be a 50-50 proposition.
Wales
My casual observation of polling suggests the Conservatives have dropped a point since the last election, Labour has gained one, the Liberal Democrats are down thirteen and Plaid Cymru are up about four. Labour are short-priced favourites to take Cardiff Central from the Conservatives and Cardiff North from the Liberal Democrats, and at least some chance of further gaining Carmathen West & South Pembrokeshire, Vale of Glamorgan and Aberconwy from the Conservatives. The Liberal Democrats are also under pressure in Brecon & Radnorshire from the Conservatives and Ceredigion in Plaid Cymru, who otherwise don’t seem in danger of matching the SNP’s accomplishments.
Scotland
It may seem odd to be short-changing Scotland in a guide to this election, but there really isn’t all that much that needs be said: anything that isn’t held by the Scottish National Party is under threat from them. The map to the right accordingly sticks to representing the result of the 2010 election. Out of 41 seats currently held by Labour, a list of seats from The Week where they “might survive” consists of Coatbridge Chryston & Bellshill, Glasgow East, Glasgow North East, Glasgow South West, Motherwell & Wishaw and Paisley & Renfrewshire South. The SNP is clear favourite in every one of the 11 seats held by the Liberal Democrats with the exception of the border seat of Berwickshire Roxburgh & Selkirk, a three-way contest in which the Liberal Democrats might instead lose to the Conservatives.
Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland and its 18 seats are generally treated as an appendage to the real action, since it has a distinctive party system with an overlaying of sectarianism. Sixteen of those seats behaved the same way at both the 2005 and 2010 elections, with five being won by Sinn Fein, eight by the Democratic Unionist Party founded by Ian Paisley, and three by the nationalist, Labour-aligned Social Democratic and Labour Party. The Ulster Unionist Party lost its only seat at the last election after formally aligning with the Conservatives, causing its one incumbent, Lady Sylvia Hermon, to contest and hold her seat of North Down as an independent. The other change was that the non-sectarian Alliance Party won Belfast East from the Democratic Unionist Party, which is mounting a determined effort to win it back.
mb – yes, and the SNP will be mightily p*d off if they lose another independence referendum, because as with Quebec that will be the end of it for a long long time.
steve777 – the unusual rise from the ashes of the ‘third force’ Liberals in the UK has now come to a screeching halt – I suppose they can say they were part of a government, but it has probably wasted them for another generation.
[Assuming that this relates to the Lib Dems going into Coalition with the Conservatives …]
It does.
[… I suppose (wisdom of hindsight) maybe it would have been better for them to support the Conservatives on confidence without going into coalition, given that Labor plus Lib Dems plus odds and ends didn’t look viable.]
Yes, probably the correct answer. I’m sure they’d still have got bashed, but no doubt not as hard.
Farage trolling like a good un on the Beeb
William Bowe@327
I’m as familiar with that Tasmanian behaviour as anyone and yet I didn’t see this coming. Mainly because in Tasmania when that behaviour is coming the polls (as adjusted for skew) will either start reflecting it years out (2014) or will increasingly pick it up as election day approaches (2006). In the UK case nearly all the polls were showing no real movement to the Tories. I doubt that there was a sudden 3-point swing on the day to explain that, although it’s possible. Seems more like some of them were doing something wrong and most of the rest herded.
The other thing is that in Tasmania the behaviour breaks down if neither party seems to have any chance of a majority. Perhaps UK residents are less trusting of poll projections to that effect than us.
William Bowe@332
LOL. I get that reference.
WOWZA!
I certainly would never have predicted this result. Truly astonishing…
Kevin Bonham
Perhaps there was a change in the demographics of people that voted? That might skew the weightings of all the polls, rather than affecting individual pollsters.
I don’t think it’s useful to compare Shorten to Milliband. Cameron is a far more like Turnbull than Abbott, and I think that is more important to consider.
Who knows whether they are truthful or not but some Labour losers are saying they had all the right policies it’s just that the Scottish people weren’t listening!!
We were swept away by “nationalism”.
For three decades the Labour has been in decline in Scotland. After Each event Labour says they must learn etc etc but they change nothing: their policies, their candidates, the way they engage.
Their endless lies, their abuse of expense accounts, their contempt for labour supporters who want change.
Their contempt for Scots who want trident abolished or moved. Their bailing out of bankers, their support for foreign wars.
The fault is not the Scottish voters it is that Labour has become a party undeserving of office.
[NathanA
……..I don’t think it’s useful to compare Shorten to Milliband. Cameron is a far more like Turnbull than Abbott, and I think that is more important to consider.]
Unpopular government making unpopular decisions gets returned to office despite the polls as the Opposition Leader was equally unpopular and unconvincing.
There are very real comparisons with Australia here.
Miliband about to quit apparently.
[
The Guardian’s political editor, Patrick Wintour, confirms that the Labour leader is expected to stand down shortly.
]
Also the parts of Scotland with some of the lowest life expectancy in Europe and with up to 50% of children living in poverty have voted Labour for 100 years and are still totally deprived.
[The other thing is that in Tasmania the behaviour breaks down if neither party seems to have any chance of a majority.]
I’d tweak that and say it does so when they have just as much chance of a majority, which given the Greens bloc is not infrequently. So often in Tasmania there is no cue as to which is the more stable option. Voters in England were provided with one by the recognition that one of the two options on the table was not in fact Labour, but Labour-SNP. Given no one thought the Conservatives would win a majority, you might argue that they were selling Conservative-Lib Dem – but that’s clearly the more reassuring option to a voter in England who wants stability.
[Election Forecast UK @Election4castUK · 7m 7 minutes ago
612 of 632 GB seats reported. Current seat projection Con 329-330 Lab 232-233 SNP 56-56 LD 8-9, see http://electionforecast.co.uk for more…]
First past the post and Optional voting must make it hard for the pollsters.
I might need to begin my UK exit strategy…
http://www.businessgreen.com/bg/news/2398387/tory-backbenchers-launch-bid-to-end-onshore-wind-farm-subsidies
It’s too funny ….The new (now ex) leader of Scottish Labour in January 2015….
[Jim Murphy has been “astonished” by how easy he’s found it to take on the SNP since he was elected leader of the Scottish Labour party, he told BuzzFeed News.
In an interview on how he’s organising the fightback against the SNP in the run-up to May’s general election, Murphy, who was elected Scottish Labour leader in December, said he’s found his opponents to be “sluggish, lethargic, and off the pace”, and much less formidable than he was warned before he became leader.]
[……]
[In terms of election targets, Murphy has an ambitious plan to not lose a single seat to the SNP, and he wants to gain the Liberal Democrat seat of East Dunbartonshire.]
http://www.buzzfeed.com/jamieross/its-been-easy-its-been-to-outdo-the-snp
Labour’s failure to gain seats in England and Wales cannot be blamed on the SNP’s crushing victory in Scotland, surely? If Labor had done well enough in England and Wales to gain a seat total of 270, they could have formed a minority government with SNP support. Labor fell well short of 270. Labor owns this failure. The SNP did not play a spoiler role.
Nicholas
If Labour had won every seat in Scotland they would still be out on their arse. As usual, Scotland made no difference.
Farage fails
While I think UKIP is dangerous and wrong about most things, one thing about which they are absolutely right is that a party that won almost 4 million votes being represented by a single MP is a travesty of democracy. (The Greens also have reason to be aggrieved.) Hopefully this will be a good demonstration of the idiocy of FPTP that will get reform off the ground for good.
UKIP do keep using the wrong example though, with the SNP (it’s the same mistake people make comparing Greens and Nationals in the House of Reps). The SNP won a ridiculous plurality (in fact majority!) of the vote in Scotland, but only ran in a comparatively small number of seats; to compare their vote across the UK with UKIP’s is meaningless. They should instead be pointing out that the Conservatives will have a majority despite the fact that more than 60% of Britons voted for someone else.
Clearly Scotland did make a difference though, to the extent that voters in England took from it that the Conservatives were more aligned with their own interests.
I think the UK system contributes to general disillusionment in politics because parties with much less than 50% can get good majorities in parliament. And taking into account voter participation I think probably about 25% of eligible voters voted for the Conservatives. Thus the other 75% feel a bit disenchanted.
WB
[Clearly Scotland did make a difference though, to the extent that voters in England took from it that the Conservatives were more aligned with their own interests.]
Well Cameron (son of a Scot!!) used English nationalism to raise fears of the “Jockalypse”.
“The Ballad of FPTP”
Blue in the wide South,
Yellow thunder in the North,
“Oh balls!”, says Red Ed.
Those on the blue side,
Will take them out of Europe.
Goodbye, old UK.
The UK made a terrible, terrible mistake in 2011 – and now they’re paying the price.
When they turned down preferential voting?
[Arrnea Stormbringer
Posted Friday, May 8, 2015 at 8:08 pm | PERMALINK
The UK made a terrible, terrible mistake in 2011 – and now they’re paying the price.]
More than 11 million UK voters disagree with your view.
Get 50% of the seats with 37% of the vote, great democratic system.
[sceptic
….Get 50% of the seats with 37% of the vote, great democratic system.]
But you are OK with the Labour Party getting 36% of the seats with 30.5% of the vote no doubt?
Clegg resigns
@ Nicholas, 378
Yes.
@ Happiness, 379
The boot could have just as easily been on the other foot – that’s the problem with FPTP.
@ sceptic, 380
No kidding.
@ Happiness, 381
I can’t speak for sceptic, but while I would prefer seats to match up with votes more precisely, 5.5% variation at that scale is not unusual even in systems with proportional representation (due to parties who poll below the threshold, a common feature of PR systems, being excluded from the vote). It is much less of a problem than a party that 63% of voters did not vote for getting a majority of the seats.
After 80 years being represented by Labour, Inverclyde has its first SNP MP…. Ronnie Cowan. He won with a 37.6% swing and with 55.1% of the total vote.
For those interested, his election video (3mins) illustrates why the SNP has replaced Labour as the voice of working class/left Scotland. It is not just about “nationalism”.
https://vimeo.com/125460435
Arrnea:
Voters were probably thinking
Conservatives + Lib Dems + UKIP were on one side and
Labour + SNP were on the other
in terms of forming minority government
Conservatives + Lib Dems + UKIP = 57% of the vote
Labour + SNP = 35% of the vote
Its pretty clear (given the Conservatives INCREASED their seats) that the voter intention was to continue, not change. Thats what they got.
Here’s the House of Commons the UK voted for, based off of BBC’s vote percentages:
CON 248
LAB 206
UKIP 85
LDEM 53
SNP 32
GRN 26
Contrast that to the one they got and the shortcomings of FPTP should be apparent.
@ Happiness, 385
Voters should never have to tactically game their vote. Any system that requires voters to do so to maximise the power of their vote misses the point of democracy.
AS:
UK voters would not have voted the way they did had they known the outcome would be determined that way.
They voted the way they did because they wanted the outcome they got.
I think both the FPTP and forced preferential voting have their weaknesses.
I think a voter putting one party 54th and another 55th on the Senate ticket is not providing any useful information at all. Perhaps above the line, or below the line up to the top 10 and the bottom 10 means something. Every other vote is meaningless* IMO.
* in the sense that it is not conveying any intention of the voter whatsoever
@ Happiness, 388
Any system that requires voters to consider what other voters are doing in determining their vote (tactical voting) does not deserve to be called democratic – it violates the idea of “one person, one vote” which is central to any fair democratic system.
@ Happiness, 389
I agree – both systems have their weaknesses, but the preferential vote is superior in that it largely removes the blight that is tactical voting.
My preferred system is Mixed-Member Proportional.
Agreed on the Senate ticket – my choice of reform there would be to abolish Group Voting Tickets and give voters the power to indicate their preferences above the line. Thresholds and other impediments are not necessary.
It doesn’t require anything….it permits (as it should).
The voters got what they wanted, thats pretty clear.
The voters in the Australian Senate elections almost certainly didn’t (although the only way to know this for sure would be to simultaneously have a plebiscite with the Senate voting paper asking whether voters would like a mix of independent/minor parties deciding every vote on the floor of the house.
@389, hence the need for voting reform for the Senate too. FPTP is, without a doubt, the worst possible option, though. I know “the voters always get it right”, but they got it seriously wrong in rejecting AV (or rather, in not understanding it fully and accepting the self-serving fear campaign waged by the Tories and parts of Labour).
To extend on @390, any voting system that requires you to pay more attention to who you want to vote against than for who you want to vote for is seriously broken.
@392, it’s only possible to say that the voters “got what they wanted” by inference and speculation. The only thing we can say for certain is that 63% of voters did not get the option they voted for. That includes the 13% who voted for UKIP, who get practically nothing to show for it – and the 3% who voted Green, who are in the same position. The system is horribly broken, only avoided producing a government with serious legitimacy problems this time through sheer luck, and is sure to bring about such a situation in the future.
I don’t believe this is a partisan point. You might be completely correct that most Britons would have preferred a Tory-led government to a Labour-led one, but we have no way of knowing that with FPTP.
@ Happiness, 392
If your intention when voting is to maximise the power of your vote, then you are required to vote tactically under FPTP. This is not democratic.
@ Frickeg, 393
Got it in one.
@ Frickeg, 394
Indeed. Under a preferential system, we would have the answer to that question. Under FPTP, you can’t possibly know unless one party gets more than 50% of the vote.
Hi Arrnea,
[Voters should never have to tactically game their vote. Any system that requires voters to do so to maximise the power of their vote misses the point of democracy.]
You might be interested in Arrow’s impossibility theorem:
[“Arrow’s impossibility theorem… states that, when voters have three or more distinct alternatives (options), no rank order voting system can convert the ranked preferences of individuals into a community-wide (complete and transitive) ranking”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theorem%5D
Less dense is this classic example of a voting paradox:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_paradox
Both PR and FPTP have their weak points but one thing I’ve noticed look back over Australia voting history is that the vast majority of seats go to the party that finishes first, and it wouldn’t have changed that many results although the Liberals would have held on in the last Victorian state election.
It should be known that I really don’t like the UKIP’s politics… but even I’ll go in to bat for them when they say they got shafted by the system.
Because that’s exactly the reason why they have only one seat to show for their percentage of the vote.
@ Libertarian Unionist, 397
Again, I didn’t say preferential voting was perfect – it’s just the least-worst option in a single-member constituency. At the very least, it ensures that the winning candidate is preferred over the second-placed candidate by a majority of voters who expressed a preference between the two.