Democratic Audit

Partisan Impact of Boundary Changes: Alternative Modelling

Guest slot: Harry Hayfield

Foreword by Lewis Baston

Harry Hayfield, one of the authors of the Britain Votes website, approached Democratic Audit and volunteered not only to calculate 'notional’ 2010 results for the model parliamentary seats, but also to write some commentary. We’re very grateful to Harry for his work on these, which bring some of the perhaps rather dry work of modelling constituencies to entertaining life.

The method used to calculate 'notional’ results (i.e. what the votes cast in 2010 in the area covered by the new constituencies were) is approximate, which is only reasonable given that the seats themselves are an unofficial model and the Rallings-Thrasher method of calculating notional results (as used in past Media Guides to the New Parliamentary Constituencies)  is somewhat laborious. The method here assumes uniform voting patterns across each old constituency. This will usually be a reasonable guide to the complexion of the new seats but which will be misleading when there are sharp contrasts between the components of the old seats (Pudsey is an example of such a seat).

The following content is an unofficial, but very welcome, contribution to the Democratic Audit work on boundaries. For more of Harry’s work, please see the Britain Votes Blog.

• 

  North East England

  If Wales is a Labour heartland, then the North East of England is a Labour fortress. Even in the 1983 Conservative landslide of the 30 seats that made up the North East only 7 elected non Labour MP's (5 Conservative, 2 Alliance) and in the Labour landslide of 1997 that figure was reduced to 2 (Lib Dem Berwick and Con Hexham) although Hexham only stayed Conservative by 222 votes (or less than 0....

  Read More…
• 

  Wales

  Wales has always been a Labour heartland. In the Labour disaster of the 1983 election Labour won 20 of the 38 Welsh seats (on a 37% vote share). The Labour landslide of 1997 saw Labour win 34 seats on a 55% vote share, but even this was eclipsed by the Labour landslide of 1966 when the only seats not to go Labour were Barry, Denbigh, Flint West and Montgomery. So it should come as no suprise to...

  Read More…