Let the great boundary rejig commence

[joevsimp]

Witney, unchanged. Doncaster North's still there. Hallam becomes Sheffield West and Penistone.

Anyone know where I can find blank ward maps, or atleast, usable ward maps?

www.andrewteale.me.uk a good start, ordered by district though so pretty crap for rural areas

google london ward map for a good one of t'smoke, but you'll need something better than paint if you want to get rid of the coulourings

[joevsimp]

Some horrid seats in east london, including this gem


In Waltham Forest, we noted that the
electorate of the borough is such that it could
be divided into two constituencies. However,
having decided to include Waltham Forest
wards in a cross-River Lee constituency,
we propose to create a Walthamstow
constituency containing ten central Waltham
Forest wards, including one (Hale End and
Highams Park) from the existing Chingford
and Woodford Green constituency and two
(Forest and Leytonstone) from the existing
Leyton and Wanstead constituency. The four
southernmost Waltham Forest wards are
included in a Stratford constituency together
with five wards from the north west of
Newham.


well why did you do it then (although I can't say I disagree with the Stratford constituency, but the north circular is a border, not a link!

[joevsimp]

STV anyone?

yes please, just stick existing districts together like they do in Ireland and don't mess about too much, I'm doing a london map and spotted some right corkers so far

[joevsimp]

here is my slightly rushed map of Greater London, any mistakes let me know
I draw particular attention to Camden and Regents Park, Hampstead and Kilburn, and Chingford and Edmonton

[joevsimp]

Map of boundaries from Guardian datablog: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/interactive/2011/sep/13/boundary-changes-constituency-map

Nifty map. Not so sure of the figures though.

well quite, they've got Labour winning a seat that's represented by 17 Green cllrs and one tory

My aunt and uncle's new seat is the hilarious Billaricay and Gt Dunmow, for the love of all things holy, why did they think that was a good idea,

[joevsimp]

Oh, by their standards that stuff is pretty tame... it's a little bit embarrassing though. There are enough decent lefty arguments against this whole thing without needed to resort to bizarre and rambling conspiracy theories.

Like this gem from Emily Thornberry MP

"In my constituency the problems are stark. Nearly 80,000 adults live in Islington South and Finsbury – but when the new boundaries were drawn up fewer than 67,000 "counted". Because the 8,000 Europeans who live in Islington can't vote in general elections, they were ignored. Many who come from outside the Commonwealth or aren't on the electoral register weren't counted either. The government shouldn't pretend these people don't need an MP, and they deserve to be counted as my constituents."

Well, she's right.

It does affect only certain types of areas, by no means all Labour-voting inner city areas, and it hasn't been made an issue of in the past. But maybe it should be addressed, in the reform this deform will hopefully lead to eventually.

I don't see why we can't do like america does and have a review every ten years when the census comes out (without all the partisan rediculousness obv.)

[joevsimp]

for some reason, I spent most of today thinking they'd called it Mersey Shore  

Your proposal doesn't look too far away from the status quo, I'm sure some would oppose it, but its better than that monster,

[joevsimp]

Ah, where would cartoonists be without that plum pudding?



(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/97/Caricature_gillray_plumpudding.jpg)

What is supposed to be that thing?
It has a rather strange shape, if it is supposed to be a plum pudding.

It's supposed to be a combination of:

a plumb pudding
a turkey voting for christmas
Nick Clegg
the LibDems' logo



also, the guardian has been caricaturing Cameron as an angrysausage since before the election, no idea why, makes him look more like Andrew Br*ns

[joevsimp]

Projection based on September average polls and initial estimates for England and Scotland
Labour 38% (+8% on 2010)
Conservatives 36% (-2% on 2010)
Liberal Democrats 11% (-13% on 2010)
Others 15% (+6% on 2010)

Labour 276 seats (+65 seats)
Conservatives 259 seats (-34 seats)
Scottish National Party 16 seats (+10 seats)
Green Party 2 seats (+2 seats)
Liberal Democrats 1 seat (-43 seats)
New Winning Line will be 301 seats, so far 554 seats calculated. 16 seats in Northern Ireland and 30 seats in Wales yet to be calculated

What two seats do you have the Greens winning? Pav+Hove Central I assume,  and B+H North, or somwhere else entirely?

[joevsimp]

Whenever a national poll is published, the first thing I do is see whether that poll publishes the full data set (as a result I only track polls by Com Res, ICM, Ipsos-MORI, Populus and Angus Reid). I then enter the number of people voting for each party and generate the % shares. In the most recent poll I have from Com Res, this gave Con 37%, Lab 36%, Lib Dem 12% and Others 15%. Over the course of a month I average all the polls in that month (which in September gave Con 36%, Lab 38%, Lib Dem 11% and Others 15%.

Usually I use UK-Elect when forecasting elections but for elections where the seats are brand new (as is the case at the moment) I used a ratio system to make my forecasts which works like this. In 2010 (under these proposed constituencies) the Conservatives won 37.69% of the vote, the September average has them on 35.81% (a drop of 1.88%). This means that the Conservative vote has fallen by 5% of it's 2010 total. So I then say to every constituency "Right, take 5% off the Conservative vote". I then do this for all the other parties as well. Lab +30%, Lib Dems -53%, SNP +151%, UKIP -4%, Green +326%, BNP -34% and Others -21%.

So for instance in a seat like Cambridge, that gives the following:
Green 16,203 (29% +22%)
Lab 15,855 (29% +5%)
Con 12,190 (22% -3%)
Lib Dem 9,272 (17% -22%)
UKIP 1,143 (2% unchanged)
Others 402 (1% unchanged)
Green GAIN from Liberal Democrat

and at the same time allows for the 2% margin of error that all polls have

I think that's a bit too much to hope for, Labour are not going to let us take a gain like Norwich south or Cambridge from under their nose without  a fight

[joevsimp]

I think that's a bit too much to hope for, Labour are not going to let us take a gain like Norwich south or Cambridge from under their nose without  a fight

I know. I can see how that method easily breaks down with the minor parties...
[/quote]

the model is also skewed by the fact that we massively underperformed in non-target seats, especially in London, but it show's what's possible, even if its not probable

[joevsimp]

I read somewhere that had the new boundaries been used in the 2010 election, Caroline Lucas wouldn't have gotten her seat. 

True.

False, that notional figure was got by assuming the vote was uniform across the whole of each seat, which it wasn't and didn't account for the fact that it is removing the 3 weakest green wards from pavillion and replacing them with the three strongest green wards from hove, and strongest one from kemptown. So it would've been an absolute cakewalk

[joevsimp]

I read somewhere that had the new boundaries been used in the 2010 election, Caroline Lucas wouldn't have gotten her seat. 

From what I understand, she probably would have won Brighton Pavilion & Hove had it existed.  The notional figures will say otherwise (as Harry said, Anthony Wells has it with a Labour majority of 1860, with the Greens second) but boundaries affect voting behaviour (personal votes, and people voting for parties when they have a chance of winning but not otherwise) and I would think that in this case they would have enough of an effect to turn it Green.

(Aren't the proposed names "Brighton Pavilion and Hove" and "Brighton and Hove North" confusing?)

theyve done loads like that, there's Oxford and Abingdon &Oxford North, Barking & Dagenham and Dagenham North that I can remember, but they'll probably end up renaming a lot of them

[joevsimp]

Still no news on the Welsh review? January is an absolute joke for that

without the review though, I still can't see Labour gaining both Powys seats

[joevsimp]

And I sort of like the Glyndwr name. If Britain is to start having constituencies named after people like Quebec or Australia, Owain Glyndwr and Shane Crosagh O'Mullan are just the kind of people I want constituencies named after.

I think they're the only ones so far, but I'd definitely approve of Epping Forest being renamed Turpin:D

[joevsimp]

are the constituencies in Australia named after local notables as a rule?

[joevsimp]

What I am more interested in is, "Where did you get the Google Earth ward maps from?"

http://boundaryassistant.org/PlanBuilder.htm

I'd just like to say, that playing with that for a few hours really shows you what a difficult task the boundary commission have to do, and how awkward the ward population numbers are in some areas to build sensible constiuencies, (having said that, there's no excuse for Billericay and Dunmow)

[joevsimp]

despite what you said above about faster population changes in the states, I do think we should do the reviews every ten years based on census data rather than the electoral roll,