Talk Elections

SouthEast Region (exc.London)
Tories -  91
Labour - 4
Lib Democrat - 5
Green Party - 1
Speaker (main parties dont contest) - 1; hes a Tory anyway.

I know they picked up seats in west midlands, east midlands, yorkshire, northwest yet to win a whopping 91 plus with massive majorites how is this not reflected with the rest of the population? how can labour and lib democrats even compete in these areas. Did Thatcher divide the country literally into two where the southeast, southwest and eastern love her while the midlands, yorkshire, lancashire, northwest, northeast, wales and scotland want to personally give her to Satan.

its like democrats fighting in utah they have no chance of getting it close even with the most stellar candidates. how can labour or lib dem or anyone even compete with the tories in the southeast.

The simple answer is that they don't. The Tories do about as well as the plague in much of the rest of the country.

The Tories are dead in Wales, Scotland and the North. The Midlands is the traditional "swing" region.

Nobody, not even Southeast England, loves Thatcher. (Well, people love Thatcher individually, but I wouldn't say there is any region where she is any more popular than around 50% approval.)

As for why... Someone could post the equivalent numbers for Scotland and the Northeast and Northwest of England; it would be equally stark. Much like the Democrats can control every House seat in New England save NH and yet fail to have a majority.

Well he used to be, but a lot of them hate him now.


There are parts of the UK (e.g. some coalfield areas, and probably parts of Liverpool) where that last bit is close to being true.

The Tories are generally weak in the cities in the North of England: they don't have a single elected councillor (the odd one has defected to them) in any of Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield or Newcastle, even in the posh bits, and except in Sheffield where they hung on until 2008 haven't for some time.

Many rural and commuter parts of the North of England are pretty Tory, though.  Look at North Yorkshire, for a start, or the commuter belt in Cheshire south of Manchester.

You've largely answered your own question. Tories sweeping the board in the S/E is no big surprise and certainly no barometer for their popularity (a bit like claiming here in the N/E we're representative of Labour's popularity).  

But Refudiate's already put his finger on why they failed to win a majority: it's no good being popular in a minority of the country. They've managed to render themselves fairly unelectable in the North (sans typical rural seats), inner London, Scotland and Wales. Even with heavy swings in the Midlands and white-washes in their heartlands, it's not enough.

Perhaps these seat reductions which come at the expense of mainly non-Tory areas will readdress that - that's what they're hoping, anyway.

Not as much as they'd hope. Someone's clearly not explained 'differential turnout' to the government. No boundary change will make voters in Liverpool Riverside get to the polling station at the same rate as voters in Tatton or Witney meaning that it will always take, on average, fewer voters to elect a Labour MP under a single-member constituency system like FPTP or AV.

Yep. Still the advantage of having less Labour seats to win, though.

And if they did, the Tories' chances of outpolling Labour were reduced significantly, so...

Another reason why FPTP system is sooo stupid

Yeah, but the proposed Alternative Vote system won't fix this.

It's worth noting that in 2010 the difference between the two mass parties in that respect was negligible.

True, but it's always an issue that's pointed to. The problem of "average votes needed" worsened for the LibDems in 2010 though.