Let the great boundary rejig commence

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Hooray for Tory gerrymandering!

As if the British electoral system wasn't already biased towards the Torries.

I wonder who'll be the first to go on a rant about this.

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That Moray seat is a complete eyesore.

Charles Kennedy to fall on his sword and retire for Danny Alexander?

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Based on those boundaries, and the last election results, what are the expected changes in seats?  Has anyone calculated that?  Or better still, produced a map?

Cupar and St. Andrews: Lib Dem 34% Lab 30%
The successor to Fife North East has now come into Labour's sights thanks to the addition of Glenrothes and therefore (if these proposals pass) I would expect Sir Menzies to stand down at the 2015 election (he would have been an MP by then for 28 years anyway)

Yeah, Ming'll stand down with a notional like that. Fife NE/Glenrothes-St. Andrews is obviously a University constituency as well...

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That Moray seat is a complete eyesore.

Charles Kennedy to fall on his sword and retire for Danny Alexander?

I'd have thought that putting Kennedy up as candidate would be the Lib Dems' only hope of holding the seat.

It'd just be an interesting situation with Alexander being a cabinet minister.

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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?

Maybe Norwich South, possibly... maybe.

Approximately, how far does each of Labour and Toory need to be ahead to be the largest party/majority government under the new boundaries?

And the LibDems on 1 seat? Really though? Even i'm not that optimistic.

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Labour's full counterproposal for Lancashire and Cheshire has now been posted by "dadge" on
http://ukelect.wordpress.com/2011/10/13/labour-counterproposals-north-west-england/

It's not quite as bad as some people had been making out, but there are some pretty bad seats.  The northern part of the region generally looks better than the southern.

That Wirral-Cheshire seat is dire, but an improvement on Mersey Banks (not that that says much). I like that they agree with my Wallasey-Meols suggestion, anyone who even knew the slightest bit about the Wirral would've proposed that in the first place. That Wirral South proposal's quite good though.

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The two Green wins are the new Brighton, Pavillion (gain from Lab) and Norwich South (gain from Lib Dem). That is a forecast based on the average polls in September 2011. To know the notional tallies (based on my estimates of Scotland and the Guardian's calculations) work backwards

Are you assuming that former LibDems just go, mostly, to the Greens? Although, that's a fair assumption, it happened in Brighton in May, it'd be a push...

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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

I know. I can see how that method easily breaks down with the minor parties...

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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...

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
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Exactly. Didn't the Green vote fall slightly nationwide?

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Labour's full counterproposal for Lancashire and Cheshire has now been posted by "dadge" on
http://ukelect.wordpress.com/2011/10/13/labour-counterproposals-north-west-england/

And now he has the Tory proposals up too:
http://ukelect.wordpress.com/2011/10/16/conservative-counterproposals-north-west-england/

Featuring more ways to make a horrible mess of Cheshire.

Upton isn't going in Wallasey.

Their alternate to Mersey Banks is still a joke, but like Labour's it's better, not that that says much.

Their Tatton proposal is a clear attempt to keep Osbourne there. There's that random ward jutting out of it, barely connected.

I prefer the Tory's Riverside proposal over Labour's.

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

True.

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Thank you.  I have a feeling that given the rate at which Green support is growing, we may be looking at the possibility of 3 Green MP's in the next election, though I know that may be a bit unrealistic.  Any constituencies where *vomits* the UKIP could possibly win? 

Not really. I doubt that they'll win anywhere unless:

1. An MP becomes seriously shamed, like in Tatton in 1997.
2. They hit around 10% nationally.

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Thank you.  I have a feeling that given the rate at which Green support is growing, we may be looking at the possibility of 3 Green MP's in the next election, though I know that may be a bit unrealistic.  Any constituencies where *vomits* the UKIP could possibly win? 

Not really. I doubt that they'll win anywhere unless:

1. An MP becomes seriously shamed, like in Tatton in 1997.
2. They hit around 10% nationally.

According to UK-Elect, UKIP do not start winning seats until 24% national vote share. The only time they get anywhere near that level is during the European Elections (in a PR election)

Yeah, when their vote rises at the same proportion in every seat. If UKIP started to gain ground nationally, they'd channel it at 1 or 2 seats, like the Greens did.

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"Heads of the Valley" - What idiot named that?

The new Ynes Mon? No.

Newport looks atrocious.

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2010 Notional result for that Shipley & Bradford North

Lab    20455   38.1%
Con   20367   38.0%
LD       9513   17.7%
Grn     1822     3.4%
UKIP     364     0.7%
BNP      235     0.4%
oth       909     1.7%

If this was a genuine suggestion, I feel as though seats like this for MPs like this (Phil Davies) would cause many there to be government rebels to be honest.

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Some of the suggested names are dire. May as well change my own to Cammel Laird's & Wirral East or something.

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No one can say Llanelli right, never mind Caerfyrddin.

How do you say it anyway? Care-frid-in?

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60 pages of pointlessness now really.

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I'm fairly deflated about this

House of Lords reform can wait. The boundary changes can't. Clegg's stance is disappointing.

To be fair, the proposed boundaries were dire and the Lords plans were dire. Win-win. Although, I would've voted yes in any referendum on the Lords stuff.

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What would be necessary, and indeed sort of logical, but is not going to happen because that is not the way laws work, is for the Commissions to be given new, nonpartisan procedures which to use in order to start from scratch with.
Since the Commissions will be forced to bumble on incompetently, I fully expect Clegg to climb down and meekly enact the gerrymander in the end.

The proposals are not gerrymandering.

Then, I suppose you can write a defense of Mersey Banks.

As a Wirralian, the effect Mersey Banks has on the rest on the peninsula as well is horrendous.

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Some bias is an inevitable feature of the electoral system the UK uses.

^ THIS.

Just look at the advantage the Canadian Tories have...

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Bye bye Mersey Banks (thank god).

Either way, they're dead anyway.

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Was "Leeds Metropolitan & Osset" really the best name they could think of?

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The idea of naming a constituency after Leeds Met is f[inks]ing hilarious.

That's the source of the hilarity.

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And may all the Labour supporters who've allowed this disgrace to happen rot, for all I care.

I'm bewildered - not even angry anymore - that the party of the working man and Chartists have supported this amendment, a constitutional disgrace beyond all measure.

Labour now support, without justification at all, unequal constituencies, meaning the vote of "One Nation Britain" is unequal. Laughable, spiteful, bitter, shallow, backwards looking idiocy of the lowest order.

The Liberals voted with Labour.

Not at all.

They kicked voting reform out of the way for a generation out of spite, despite being a party formed on the basis of fair representation, and now they're the backbone against a manifesto commitment.

I can't put into many more words the utter contempt with which I hold that duplicitous shower of anti-democratic charlatans. The Labour Party stands for unaccountable establishment and each and every one of their parliamentary members can go to merry Hell for all I care.

Seething? You bet I am.  

"Calm down", as our Rt. Hon PM would say.

And on AV, there was no worth at all in changing one crap system for another just with a slim chance/hope that PR might come at some point in the future.

And if Labour are a band of anti-democratic charlatans, I'd really love to know what that makes the Liberal Democrats.

And don't act like the proposals weren't absolutely disgusting anyway.