Messing around with constituencies...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Thought I'd give this another go on a why the hell not basis. I will also update my multi-member districts thread soon-ish.

Basically I'll follow the same general rules as the boundary commision does, although unlike them I'm not interested in making local govt. boundaries and parliamentary boundaries similer. I will also include social/economic factors in drawing maps in certain areas. I'll also come up with better names...

Oh... and historical areas will be used as a guide in certain cases...

Shropshire first:

1. Shrewsbury: made up of all Shrewsbury town wards, and the following ex-Atcham RDC wards from Shrewsbury & Atcham BC; Bayston Hill, Hanwood & Longden, Haughmond & Attingham, Montford, Pimhill.
Electorate: 63,580

2. Ludlow: made up of South Shropshire DC, the following wards of Shrewsbury & Atcham BC; Condover, Lawley, Rea Valley, Rowton, and the following wards of Bridgnorth DC; Alveley, all four Bridgnorth wards,  Claverley, Ditton Priors, Glazeley, Harrington, Highley, Morville, Stottesdon, Worfield.
Electorate: 65,747

3. Great Wenlock: made up of the following wards of Telford & Wrekin UA; Ironbridge Gorge, Woodside, Madeley, Cuckoo Oak, Horsehay & Lightmoor, Wrockwardine, Dawley Magna, Brookside, The Nedge, Malinslee, Lawley & Overdale, Ketley & Oakengates, St Georges, the following wards of Bridgnorth DC; Broseley East, Broseley West, Much Wenlock, and a ward from Shrewsbury & Atcham; Severn Valley.
Electorate: 65,522

4. Wellington: made up of the following wards of Telford & Wrekin UA; Ercall Magna, Edgmond, all four Newport wards, all seven Wellington wards, Church Aston & Lilleshall, Muxton, Donnington, Wrockwardine Wood & Trench, Priorslee, Hadley & Leegomery, Apley Castle, and all three Shifnal wards and both Albrighton wards from Bridgnorth DC.
Electorate: 70,862

5. Oswestry & North Shropshire: same as existing seat, but with a better name.
Electorate: 72,964

This map is far from perfect; the way the wards are drawn is unhelpful in a few areas. A better map would have been created if I'd used parishes.

The Shrewsbury seat is the smallest of the five for the purposes of irony.

The gap between the biggest and smallest seats be 9,384... compared with 12,960 on the map drawn by the boundary commision.

Comments on political implications and a map will come soon.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Red lines are my boundaries, blue ones the real ones and black ones local authority boundaries.
The boundary between Oswestry & North Shropshire and Wellington is the same as the existing boundary.

Political impact:

Shrewsbury: flips from Tory to Labour, and would be safer Labour on these boundaries than it is Tory on the existing ones.

Ludlow: becomes a safer Tory seat, although likely not impossible for a LibDem win as Rea Valley has a Liberal tradition of sorts.

Great Wenlock: safer for Labour than the existing Telford constituency; it loses Priorslee and Broseley is a Labour town.

Wellington: the ward it loses is Tory but with a decent Labour vote, while of the two wards it gains, one is strongly Labour, the other is strongly Tory. The changes might be enough to flip the seat, but it's hard to tell. Majority here would have been under 500 and, maybe, under 100.

So, 4 Tory, 1 Labour, becomes 2 Tory, 2 Labour and one that's too close to call.

I should add that this isn't a gerrymander (the main aims of the map were to "free" Shrewsbury and to make a seat as close to the boundaries of the old Liberty/Borough of Wenlock as possible), although I could easily make one and in one case it would be very, very easy; adding Priorslee to Great Wenlock (which would be logical for electoral equality but nothing else) would flip Wellington red for certain.

[afleitch]

Oh come on that's blatant gerry mandering and bears no resemblence to traditional seats way back to the post-war era and ties fermented by those seats Particularly this Wellington/Wenlock thing. If you're going to carry out pro-Labour gerrymandering then I'm going to do a 'review' that favours the Tories!

Oh but interesting stuff regardless!

[Rural Radical]

Brilliant 2 Safe labour seats and a further marginal.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Oh come on that's blatant gerry mandering

Blatant gerrymandering that gives Labour two seats (and which makes a marginal Tory seat fairly safe), when I could easily have done a map that would give Labour three fairly safe constituencies?

Anyway, if the Shrewsbury seat there is a pro-Labour gerrymander, then the existing Shrewsbury seat has to be considered to be a pro-Tory gerrymander

A better Shrewsbury would have been made if I'd used Civil Parishes; it would certainly look nicer on the map. I'm not happy about including Longden in the seat; but Hanwood is essential so...

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Population changes make that impossible to do fairly IMO.

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Not sure quite how that's a gerrymander; Wellington is just a slightly enlarged version of The Wrekin (note that I added Priorslee (a very strong Tory ward as it happens) to it, which I wouldn't have done if I'd been looking to gerrymander the area) while Great Wenlock is based on the pre-Reform Act borough of that name (though extended a little northwards and westwards to give it a legal population) and also happens to be an entirely logical constituency; Broseley is essentially part of the Telford urban area (and should really be in Telford & Wrekin UA), while Much Wenlock and Severn Valley are now also economically dependent on Telford.

I should add here that I know that area "quite" well

Btw, I would have prefered the northern boundary of Great Wrekin to have been the M54 motorway, but it would have had an electorate under 60,000.

Thinking about this, but if I wanted to gerrymander the Telford area, the best thing to do would be to add the existing constituencies together, and split them East/West rather than North/South.

[Gabu]

Blatant gerrymandering that gives Labour two seats (and which makes a marginal Tory seat fairly safe), when I could easily have done a map that would give Labour three fairly safe constituencies?

You should gerrymander more stuff for the Labour Party to see how ridiculously unfair you can make the UK for everyone else.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Blatant gerrymandering that gives Labour two seats (and which makes a marginal Tory seat fairly safe), when I could easily have done a map that would give Labour three fairly safe constituencies?

You should gerrymander more stuff for the Labour Party to see how ridiculously unfair you can make the UK for everyone else.

Gerrymandering is a bad, bad thing so I won't.

But I will say how it might be done (as I did here. Amazing what swapping an area of c.4,000 voters can do if that area just happens to be one of the richest in the West Midlands isn't it?) while drawing a proper map based on the rules above

Btw, if this map seems to favour Labour, it's because the existing map in Shropshire favours the Tories. In some other counties (Wiltshire for example) a map drawn in the same way as this one would actually give the Tories a seat at Labour's expense.

An interesting thing just discovered but not mentioned yet, is that there's no way to make Ludlow more LibDem without resorting to nasty gerrymandering.

[minionofmidas]

One should remember how much Shropshire seats swung around under the current boundaries.
The county was 3 Labour, 2 Tory in 97
3 Labour, 1 Tory, 1 LD in 01 until a defection made it
2 Labour, 2 LD, 1 Tory and then went
4 Tory, 1 Labour in 05.
I'm not sure what it was on notional 92 results - either the same 4 Tory, 1 Labour or even
5 Tory.
I doubt Al's Shrewsbury seat would still be Labour should the Tories and Labour poll the same national total in the next elections that they're now polling at.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

One should remember how much Shropshire seats swung around under the current boundaries.

These seats might swing about quite a bit as well; Oswestry & North Shropshire and Great Wenlock are both safe (barring landslides), Ludlow would be safer for the Tories than the existing seat (but still not that safe; it might have flipped in '01 even with these boundaries. The Tory candidate that year had this amazing ability to piss off even strong Tory voters... he actually polled the lowest % a Tory has ever polled in the Ludlow constituency since it's creation in the late 19th century), Wellington would be absurdly marginal, and while Shrewsbury would be more Labour than the existing seat, it wouldn't really be safe (it would have last been Labour in 1966! Interestingly enough the Liberals wouldn't have gained it in the early '70's; the area lost to Ludlow has, or at least had, a decent Liberal vote).

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One party tends to get strangely lucky each year for some reason; the existing seats tend to be quite diverse and lean towards being a wee bit polarised, so turnout patterns might explain that a bit.

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4 Tory, 1 Labour, although the notional people messed up a bit with the Telford area; Telford's northern suburbs (Hadley, Donnington, etc) are strongly Labour, as is the south of Wellington. IMO the existing Telford seat would have gone Tory in '83.

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Assuming a uniform national swing, it'd be very close; probably a majority of under a thousand either way. Depends how many people vote Labour in the lost wards; not many o/c, but I think local elections would tend to exaggerate how few there are.

Btw, it would be possible to draw a Shrewsbury seat that was fairly secure for Labour even then; but it would either be a gerrymander ("Shrewsbury & Gobowen", "Shrewsbury & Broseley"...) or would be stupidly undersized (just Shrewsbury proper and Bayston Hill).

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Herefordshire now:

1. Hereford: made up of all 7 Hereford City wards, Hollington, Stoney Street, Credenhill, Burghill-Holmer & Lyde, Hampton Court, Backbury, Pontrilas, Valletts, Golden Valley North, Golden Valley South, Sutton Walls
Electorate: 66,177

2. Leominster & Ross: made up of everything else
Electorate: 66,873

One of the problems with Herefordshire is that it has some very obvious regions within it, but the sort of population distribution that means you have to split a load of them or risk an ugly looking map. I've gone for the second option;



These days, the Hereford suburbs extend quite a bit further north than the old Roman Road; Holmer is almost indistinguishable from the areas in Hereford proper south of it.

As for political implications; not a clue actually. Probably not that large.

[minionofmidas]

I've just understood why anyone would have wanted to rename the old Hereford seat "Hereford & South Herefordshire" (although I still don't approve). I wasn't aware the city was so far in its north before.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I've just understood why anyone would have wanted to rename the old Hereford seat "Hereford & South Herefordshire" (although I still don't approve). I wasn't aware the city was so far in its north before.

Most people don't seem to be aware of that either actually.

If they had to rename it, Hereford & Ross would have been better (and would have made more sense) than what they chose...

Btw, North Herefordshire proper is just the three northernmost wards in the county. Extremely right wing area for some reason.

[minionofmidas]

So a better name for that one would have been "Leominster & North Hereford Suburbs"?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

So a better name for that one would have been "Leominster & North Hereford Suburbs"?

Technically yes

IIRC the local Labour party (yes; the area has one ) suggested "Leominster & East Herefordshire" as a name for it.

Btw, Brum is next. Might try seeing if it's possible to do racial gerrymandering in the U.K or not...

[afleitch]

With Hereford and S. Hereford loosing 4 Tory held wards 2 Lib Dem Held Wards and 1 independent. But gaining 2 Tory held wards and 3 indys it is difficult to guess how the seat would change as it depends on how the independent wards tend to vote. It would still remain a marginal, perhaps strengthening the Lib Dems slightly and strengthening the Tories in Leominster

[Rural Radical]

One should remember how much Shropshire seats swung around under the current boundaries.

These seats might swing about quite a bit as well; Oswestry & North Shropshire and Great Wenlock are both safe (barring landslides), Ludlow would be safer for the Tories than the existing seat (but still not that safe; it might have flipped in '01 even with these boundaries. The Tory candidate that year had this amazing ability to piss off even strong Tory voters... he actually polled the lowest % a Tory has ever polled in the Ludlow constituency since it's creation in the late 19th century), Wellington would be absurdly marginal, and while Shrewsbury would be more Labour than the existing seat, it wouldn't really be safe (it would have last been Labour in 1966! Interestingly enough the Liberals wouldn't have gained it in the early '70's; the area lost to Ludlow has, or at least had, a decent Liberal vote).

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One party tends to get strangely lucky each year for some reason; the existing seats tend to be quite diverse and lean towards being a wee bit polarised, so turnout patterns might explain that a bit.

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4 Tory, 1 Labour, although the notional people messed up a bit with the Telford area; Telford's northern suburbs (Hadley, Donnington, etc) are strongly Labour, as is the south of Wellington. IMO the existing Telford seat would have gone Tory in '83.

I disagree there. In 1983 Priorslee was a lot smaller and less Conservative than it is now. Most of what is now Priorslee didnt exist and a seat called Priorslee (mainly St Georges) was represented by Labour on Shropshire County Council.

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Assuming a uniform national swing, it'd be very close; probably a majority of under a thousand either way. Depends how many people vote Labour in the lost wards; not many o/c, but I think local elections would tend to exaggerate how few there are.

Btw, it would be possible to draw a Shrewsbury seat that was fairly secure for Labour even then; but it would either be a gerrymander ("Shrewsbury & Gobowen", "Shrewsbury & Broseley"...) or would be stupidly undersized (just Shrewsbury proper and Bayston Hill).

[afleitch]

Apologies for hijacking this thread, but I have redrawn the West Yorkshire constituencies. I am not a fan of 'pie' constituenices that carve through urban and suburban and often rural areas creating poorly balanced seats. I prefer grouping inner city wards together and suburban wards together etc and not giving urban areas rural hinterlands.

The map below defines this; you can see smaller inner city constituencies surrounded by suburban etc and the outhermost constituencies at the border of the old met are distinctively more 'rural.' As for the names I've abolished 'north' and 'east' etc



A. Keighley
B. Shipley
C. Bradford Moor
D. Bradford Thornton and Wibsey
E. Bradford City
F. Calder Valley
G. Halifax
H. Colne Valley and Denby Dale
I. Huddersfield
J. Spen and Mirfield
K. Batley and Dewsbury
L. Hemsworth
M. Normanton and Pontefract
N. Wakefield
O. Morley and Stanley
P. Elmet
Q. Otley
R. Leeds Beeston and Rothwell
S. Pudsey and Bramley
T. Leeds Kirkstall
U. Leeds Westwoodhall
V. Leeds Roundhay

Now they have been drawn I'm going to look at the changes and see how this would affect party strengths and who holds what

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Apologies for hijacking this thread, but I have redrawn the West Yorkshire constituencies. I am not a fan of 'pie' constituenices that carve through urban and suburban and often rural areas creating poorly balanced seats. I prefer grouping inner city wards together and suburban wards together etc and not giving urban areas rural hinterlands.

No apology needed

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Bradford Buttershaw (is there an "e" on the end or not? Always forget) might work as a name for that.

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Be careful; local elections in parts of West Yorkshire are an entirely different thing to other elections there.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

In 1983 Priorslee was a lot smaller and less Conservative than it is now. Most of what is now Priorslee didnt exist and a seat called Priorslee (mainly St Georges) was represented by Labour on Shropshire County Council.

That's true; 1983 was closer there than I thought anyway. I still think they over-estimated the Labour vote for the '92 notional though.

[Rural Radical]

In 1983 Priorslee was a lot smaller and less Conservative than it is now. Most of what is now Priorslee didnt exist and a seat called Priorslee (mainly St Georges) was represented by Labour on Shropshire County Council.

That's true; 1983 was closer there than I thought anyway. I still think they over-estimated the Labour vote for the '92 notional though.

The said councillor was Speaker of the County Council.

[afleitch]

Not too many chages re constituencies in the West Midlands. Many inner city seats would becomes more solidly Labour. Tories would probably gain Colne Vallet and Denby Dale and the new Spen and Mirfield seat would be very close on paper. but it is difficult to make a firm prediction either way (with Batley and Dewsbury becoming solidly Labour) The new 'rural' Otley seat would also be likely to be a narrowly held Conservative seat thanks to the inclusion of Conservative held wards from present day Pudsey and similar wards from Leeds NW. Pudsey and Bramley would as a result becomes more solidly Labour. Leeds Kirkstall (West) becomes a better shot for the Lib Dems but ultimately remains Labour. So a likely 2 seat gain for the Tories with the Lib Dems loosing 1 and Labour loosing 1

[Harry Hayfield]

Red lines are my boundaries, blue ones the real ones and black ones local authority boundaries.
The boundary between Oswestry & North Shropshire and Wellington is the same as the existing boundary.

Political impact:

Shrewsbury: flips from Tory to Labour, and would be safer Labour on these boundaries than it is Tory on the existing ones.

Ludlow: becomes a safer Tory seat, although likely not impossible for a LibDem win as Rea Valley has a Liberal tradition of sorts.

Great Wenlock: safer for Labour than the existing Telford constituency; it loses Priorslee and Broseley is a Labour town.

Wellington: the ward it loses is Tory but with a decent Labour vote, while of the two wards it gains, one is strongly Labour, the other is strongly Tory. The changes might be enough to flip the seat, but it's hard to tell. Majority here would have been under 500 and, maybe, under 100.

So, 4 Tory, 1 Labour, becomes 2 Tory, 2 Labour and one that's too close to call.

I should add that this isn't a gerrymander (the main aims of the map were to "free" Shrewsbury and to make a seat as close to the boundaries of the old Liberty/Borough of Wenlock as possible), although I could easily make one and in one case it would be very, very easy; adding Priorslee to Great Wenlock (which would be logical for electoral equality but nothing else) would flip Wellington red for certain.

I love the idea of a Great Wenlock constituency simply because I like constituencies named after places that don't get much of a mention. However, I'm not sure that Wellington would be well recieved. You'd have Telford up in arms about the name, so you'd have to have either Telford, Wellington and the Wrekin or just Telford and Wellington instead.