A rough guide to the British election

A region-by-region beginners’ guide of what to look for in today’s/tomorrow’s British election.

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.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

501 comments on “A rough guide to the British election”

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  1. @ mexicanbeemer, 398

    I actually ran some numbers a while back based on what would have happened if the Australian Parliament had been elected by PR – and I found that several of the last few majority governments would instead have had to be minority governments backed either by the Greens or the Democrats (before their collapse).

    It was a simplistic assessment, not taking into account what different voting patterns might have been expressed under PR, but I suspect the general finding that the major parties would have needed minor party support to form government at all most of the time would be nonetheless accurate.

  2. There is of course the inevitable question of legitimacy because of a more right wing Tory Government, elected only by the English, imposing policies on Scotland who’s voters totally rejected them.

  3. @398 further, Australia has almost always had a fairly rigid two-party system, with minor parties almost never coming into play for lower house seats until recently. But Ballina in the recent NSW election is a great example, and the same applies to Britain, which has a whole host of parties who could conceivably win seats in a lot of cases, depending on vote splitting. Don’t even get me started on Northern Ireland!

  4. Federally, 1961 at the very least would have changed results under FPTP (Labor would have won). Although of course we can then ask whether DLP voters would not have voted Liberal instead tactically to keep Labor out.

  5. Since it’s upper house is useless, the UK would be best follow NZ’s footsteps and take up MMP which would be more easily accepted than a straight PR.

  6. @ swamprat, 403

    That might itself be a catalyst for a Scottish independence referendum Mk II, especially if the Tories press ahead with dismantling the NHS and other parts of the remaining welfare state.

  7. @ Raaraa, 406

    Agreed. MMP can be sold to them on the basis that they keep the notion of local representatives while at the same time making sure that votes translate into seats across the board.

    Best of both worlds.

  8. AS

    Sorry but I m talking about the current HoR system rather than the system you refer to.

    Frickeg

    Yes we can point to many examples, last years Victorian state election is an example we could add but overall the majority of seats go to the candidate who polls the highest primary vote.

    Australians political system has been pretty stable over the last 100+ years or so, for while the names have changed the main boundary between the left and right has remained pretty stable

  9. @406 probably the ideal solution – and already used in Holyrood elections, I believe (possibly Wales and NI as well?). Lords abolition would be the icing on the cake, but I suspect that might be a bridge too far for many.

  10. @ mexicanbeemer, 409

    but overall the majority of seats go to the candidate who polls the highest primary vote.

    True only because both major parties (I’m counting the Coalition as one “party” here) run seats across the board – and it still disenfranchises people who vote for minor parties. This is true of both FPTP and preferential voting, but it is certainly more true of FPTP.

  11. AS

    [if the Tories press ahead with dismantling the NHS and other parts of the remaining welfare state.]

    Yes, though Scotland has always had its own NHS.

    To quote a (more adventurous) blogger:

    [There is now no course to take but root and branch opposition to the consequences of a Tory rule which Scotland has just declared anathema. The only way forward is now independence and the only route is through a mounting extra-parliamentary opposition over the next few years.]

  12. @409 mexicanbeemer, my point is that Australia and the UK are not really comparable in this respect. The UK has had, until recently at least, a fairly powerful centrist party that makes a play for a whole lot of seats, and now has significant parties both right and left of centre that have the potential to challenge for seats. I very much doubt that the majority of election results would be the same in the UK under preferential voting – to begin with the primary results would differ wildly due to the prevalence of tactical voting, but in the past plenty of Tories would have lost to Labour/Lib Dem preferences, and this time UKIP preferences would have played a huge part.

  13. @ Frickeg, 410

    Actually, Holyrood uses the Additional Members System, which is a little different.

  14. @ Frickeg, 410

    Holyrood’s system could probably be described, in Australian terms, as the result of combining both Tasmanian houses of parliament into one chamber.

  15. [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.]

    Which doesn’t say great things about the future of the union. Scotland votes for the SNP, England votes for a defacto ENP and the party of ‘Britain’ (Labour) gets trounced.

  16. The Holyrood electoral system was agreed to by the Labour Government at the time because it would guarantee that the SNP would never get a majority.

    Haha another Labour tactic that didn’t quite work out!!.

  17. Have any columnists from the Murdoch stable barfed up anything about the death of global left-wing politics yet?

  18. With Scotland, I suspect that this election result, and even more the upcoming EU referendum, probably raises the possibility of Scottish independence in about ten years to 50-50 or so. I presume that if, in the referendum, England votes to leave and Scotland votes to stay, the union would break up almost automatically.

  19. @417, like OPV for Labor here, or reducing the size of the Tasmanian parliament … few things are more satisfying than a self-serving electoral reform turning around to disadvantage its perpetrators.

  20. Will also be very interesting to watch Plaid Cymru over the next few years. Wales of course is very different to Scotland in a lot of ways, but I presume there might be some left-wing Welsh who will look at what Scotland is getting out of the SNP (i.e. less austerity, or at least unified campaigning against it) and want some of that.

  21. Was it a great win for Cameron?

    Actually the current Government had its seats slashed from 363 (a buffer of 40) to about 3 or 4 (or 12 should the LD join again which is unlikely).

    The Tories took 10 seats from Labour but lost 9 seats to Labour giving them a gain of one.

    They will only be a by-election or two away from losing control of the Commons.

    [Yesterday was at best a double-edged sword for David Cameron.

    He knows that anything that smacks too blatantly of skullduggery will hammer a further wedge between a Scotland and the rest of the UK, amplifying the chasm of bitterness that the Tories’ campaign created for short-term advantage. And driving Scotland out of the UK, despite the obvious arithmetical boon it would give the party, would be a disaster for the Conservatives, both politically and strategically.]

    http://wingsoverscotland.com/the-something-and-nothing-election/#more-71026

  22. 403 The Tories actually made significant gains in Wales last night and held their seat in Scotland and now have as many Scottish seats as Labour and the LDs. Of course it was Scotland which prevented England getting a Tory majority in 2010 so it works both ways, indeed Heath and Home won Tory majorities in England in 1974 and 1964 but Wilson won a Labour majority across the UK thanks to Scotland.

    Anyway, Scots backed the Union by a 10% margin under a conservative led government despite the prospect it could be reelected. I would expect some deal between Cameron and Sturgeon on further powers for the Scottish Parliament in return for devomax

  23. Cameron just promised more devolution to Scotland, Wales and NI with tax powers as well as an EU referendum outside Downing Street as well as further tax powers.Gracious towards Clegg and Miliband, both who have now resigned

  24. Simon

    As far as I can work out, the Tories gains were:

    1 from UKIP; net 1 from Labour and 23? from LDP. 9The gains from LDP are within the previous coalition.)

    The ‘coalition’ lost 10 LDP to SNP and 12 LDP to Labour.

  25. Something I found off Reddit. The winners and losers of this election. Some parties won a lot more seats for the amount of votes they received.

  26. 360 Of the final polls 3 had the Tories ahead, 1 Labour, the rest tied, it was the scale of the victory the polls underestimated, not that the Tories were ahead. Though certainly Bishop and Turnbull are more Cameron like than Abbott

  27. I think William’s header of “Rough Guide….” should now read “Rough Ride for the UK……….”

    One feels for Cameron in that his mandate – a word much beloved by the Tory party, can hardly said to extend beyond Berwick-upon-Tweed where one lonely Conservative sits around Edinburgh, 2 or 3 Irish refuse to turn up (lucky for Cameron this time around I suppose) and a huge slab of red neck voters under the UKIP banner has just one representative to vent their spleen through.

    There is no doubt the in the Lion and Unicorn race in England alone, and to a lesser extend Wales, the Lion has the upper hand over the unicorn, but it is a slim majority indeed and a few by-elections over the next few years this is likely not be be sustained.

    I thought a tougher job would have been ahead fro Miliband – if he had won – in relation to the Scots. The SNP is certainly nationalist in flavour, but Tory it ain’t.

    The BBC banner head says “Cameron forms new UK government….” trouble is the UK is on the brink of falling to pieces.

    A trouble-filled time ahead for the Old Dart I fancy.

    The UKIP sentiment is not going to disappear, the Scots will not accept tokenism and damn Europe and the referendum is still waiting for him.

  28. 427 Yes, but the Coalition fought as separate parties and the Tories won a majority and no longer need it

  29. At the end of the day, what matters is who can form government on the floor of the House of Commons. All else is discussion material.

    This point is clearly understood in England by all sides though our local conservatives in 2010 had some difficulty with this concept demanding a “new election” when they didn’t like the result.

    The BBC in its earlier news talked about the new government being in a Hung Parliament. Nobody went into palpitations. Same applies if the Conservatives fall short and it is a Minority Government.

    It could well be that in the not too distant future the Conservatives might be forced into minority government but I suspect this will be understood by all and there will not be pathetic calls, as there was from the LNP here for “fresh elections”.

    Mind you, with the problems piled on Cameron’s plate England will have a lot of problems to deal with – and having a largely geographical unrepresentative government is just one of the elements.

    What government in London can now really talk about representing the “United Kingdom” when barely anyone in the government represents much of the population north of Manchester.

    Perhaps this is where the monarchy can come into its own as monarchist keep reminding us it is the power of the monarchy to unite which makes it such a powerful means of government when compared to the inferior republican model, which as all monarchist tell us, is “unstable”.

  30. Swamp rat – the Conservatives have gone from being in an uncomfortable coalition with the LD’s to governing in their own right. That is a massive win.

    All the claims coming from the left that the Union is in doubt ignore the fact that a Referendum has only just been held and decisively won. Scottish Labour voters could comfortably vote for SNP out of self interest with the hope that the SNP could be bullied into spending lots more in Scotland.

    I’m interested to see if the EU Referendum question really is an “In or Out” one or more mealy mouthed obfuscation.

  31. Tricot – every Opposition would have an election every week if they could until they won. The LNP were more than justified given Jokeshot and Whinger’s treachery against their conservative electorates wishes for which both were to cowardly to face the music for in 2013 and conservative members were handsomely returned.

  32. Cameron has not only won a majority on their own rig but has brought about the resignation of his three prime rivals.

    A magnificent day for the UK, Conservatives and Cameron – but mostly for Crosby-Textor.

  33. I’d reckon MMP would be an easy sell in the UKfor general elections,as it’s already used in local government elections.

  34. Painful as it is, I must admit that this is a clear victory for Cameron and a defeat for Labor. Despite an Abbott-esque record of economic mismanagement, Cameron has not only survived, but seen his rivals weakened. Labor must re-examine its strategy.

    I suppose that girl will change her website to Millibye now?

  35. Yes, Stuart Campbell got his numbers around the wrong way in that otherwise excellent summary.

    I am absolutely gobsmacked at how bad the polling was. Not just that everyone missed, but that everyone missed so consistently for so long. Some serious methodological issues to address for the UK polling companies. And don’t give me any “shy Tories” nonsense.

    With the margin so thin and the Lib Dems now absolutely incentivised to run a mile from anything that looks remotely like co-operation with the Conservatives, this isn’t quite the ringing endorsement that it initially appeared for the Tories. And they’re only going to have an even more fractitious backbench – anyone who can command 5 friends in a tight vote is a kingmaker.

    Our British friends are cursed for 5 more years of interesting times, methinks.

  36. 437

    MMP is not used in the UK. They have a watered down version of MMP, the Alternative Member System (fewer proportional seats than constituency seats and no overhang mandates), in Scotland, Wales and London (all introduced under Blair). Local Government in Scotland and Northern Ireland, the Northern Irish Assembly and the Northern Irish seats in the EU Parliament all use STV. The EU elections in Great Britain use list PR. The rest is a all FPTP except for a few Mayors elected with the Supplementary Vote system (a watered down version of preferential voting with only 1 preference and all but the top two candidates elected all at once).

  37. Serves Labor right.
    Why they campaigned for the NO vote last year was stupid and galling. It was english politicians campaigning for their own self interest ahead the interests of the Scottish.

    And serves Clegg and the Lib Dems right too. Sold their integrity for a baby seat at the table. Just like Meg Lees and our democrats (remember them?).

  38. 438 Cameron was able to claim the UK had the fastest growth in the G7 last year and a falling deficit, even if not far enough

  39. William, This might interest you (From the Guardian’s election blog):

    Damien Lyons Lowe, the chief executive of Survation, one of the main opinion polling firms, has revealed that his company conducted a telephone poll the day before the election, carefully balanced demographically, and using mobile as well as landline numbers to maximise the reach.

    It put the Conservatives on 37% (the actual result was 37%) , Labour on 31% (30.5%), Ukip on 11% (13%), the Lib Dems on 10% (8%)and the Greens on 5% (4%).

    So why didn’t Survation publish it? The answer is that it didn’t “seem right”. In a post appropriately titled Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory, Lyons Lowe writes:

    The results seemed so “out of line” with all the polling conducted by ourselves and our peers – what poll commentators would term an “outlier” – that I “chickened out” of publishing the figures – something I’m sure I’ll always regret.

    The fact is, there is a herd mentality in the polling business – they’d all rather be wrong together.

    Cheers,
    Paul Hodgson

  40. CC@435

    I see you love turning up when things brighten up for a conservative party – even one at the other side of the world and whose political problems, while having some similarities to Oz, are sufficiently different to make straight out comparisons difficult.

    In your poor attempt to disparage three quite thoughtful politicians, you totally side-stepped my point about conservatives – such as yourself I suppose – talking out of both sides of the mouth. “Hung parliaments”, “Minority governments”, “Mandates” all bad, bad in Oz in 2010. “Unfair!”, “Fresh Elections!” scream the LNP horde.

    All you can do is point to the Conservative Party’s Aussie huckster as some kind of wunderkind.

    The fact that the Tory party ceases to exist north of Birmingham (slight exaggeration here, but you get my point) makes Cameron’s talk about governing for the United Kingdom pretty empty. His problem will be coping with an inward looking Little England over the next few years with those clustered around London and the south-east and west, thinking that is the real world.

    However, his comments match those for the worst leader Australia has had in about two generations, in his post election guff about having to think and act for the whole of Australia.

    As one earlier poster pointed out Abbott was, in fact, a poor LOTO and has made an equally poor PM. The electorate didn’t really want him at the last election, and he came within a ace of being cut off at the knees by your own kind.

    By the way, any comment about the $28 billion of WA state debt soon to balloon out to what? $35, $40 billion? Pick a number.

    Same old, same old from you…Labor debt bad, bad bad ….but kind of dead silence on the total failure of the current LNP crew to “fix the debt problem”. Now, how many years has Barnett been the leader here??

    A bit too long use the usual Liberal cop out of blaming Labor – who, coincidentally left the finances in good nick.

    By the way, do you still have a job? Or, is the boom-that-was-to-last-for-ever, over for you too?

    Perhaps there is an army posting for you?

  41. 371 Under preferential voting UKIP would most likely have won zero seats. Zero. For example in Clacton the Tories would most likely have overtaken them by picking up nearly all the preferences of Labour and LD voters. In seats where they ran second, Tories or Labour would most likely have knocked them into third. Preferential voting does not make it easier for parties on the left or right fringe, it makes it easier for moderates. And it does not deliver PR.

  42. The problem with Democracy is everybody gets to vote
    These would qualify as Howard’s Battlers
    From the Guardian….

    Shopping in Marks & Spencer on the Middlebrook retail park Dai Case, 57, ex-army and a retired miner, said he’d voted Ukip “even though if my dad could come down from heaven he would kick my arse”. His shop worker wife Di MacBeth Case, 54, had voted Tory. “The main reason we’ve got a Conservative MP this time is the Scottish influence. People were scared of Labour working with the Scottish National party,” she said.

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