Talk Elections

As a sort of Christmas present to you all...

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I've decided to make some maps of past U.K election results (I boundaries at that nice scale from 1955 onwards; the rewards of politely emailing people I think).
I intend to make a map of % majorities at every General Election from 1955 onwards (eventually) and that's probably the only time I'll use the full maps; I'd prefer to do % vote maps and % vote by party maps for smaller areas (ie; Wales, London, etc.). Would show up a lot better anyway as there'd be no threat of resizing. If larger maps end up being resized, just copy them and paste onto a paint thing or something to look at.
1974Feb was the first election I decided to do as (IMO anyway) it's probably the most important post-45 election in determining the political landscape. You literally can't compare national PV figures before 1974 and after 1974; before then it was common (even in times of three big parties like the '20's) to have just two candidates in each constituency; a couple of M.P's were even unopposed. After then all three major parties have tried to run candidates in every seat, every election.

Thanks Al :) I'm working backwards on my Scottish stuff for uni and I was about to do the two 74 elections! My boundary maps were a little offset when I did 79 and this should correct them :)

Very interesting. I wonder how the 2005 result would have looked on these boundaries ?

If you draw a line from the Wash to the Severn its not that different from the 2005 result. The area north of that divide is very different. Especially in Cheshire.

interesting so this is 1974 what were the results seat totals. 

the conservative party doesn't do good in scotland anymore right,  I thought they only had a few seats now. it looks like they had a lot more back then.

Thanks! That's great, but it's being shown as smaller on my computer... Still I can make it out.

Interesting to see how safe Tory Brighton Pavilion was, especially with that West Sussex seat (which i presume contains Horsham and Crawley) being fairly marginal. Also, I wouldn't have expected there to be a Labour MP from the Medway area in such a close election. I would've assumed the Home counties to be even more a no-go-area for Labour back in those days/

That's the forum's doing I think... it auto-resizes now. To see the map in it's proper size, copy it and paste it onto a paint file or something similer.


Demographic changes are only part of the story there; IIRC the current seat has some dodgy areas that used to be in Kemptown until '97.


In fact it was called Horsham & Crawley ;)
The SE New Towns were still, well, new, back then, so they were still almost entirely made up of ex-pat Londoners from working class families, and voted like it (look at Harlow. The Tories actually came *third* there in 1974F...). They all took a hard swing to the right in the '80's and a slightly less hard one back to the left in the late '90's.


The big pink seat is the old Gravesend constituency if that helps. IIRC Rochester & Chatham (I think that was the name) fell to Labour in October though. Gillingham was a fairly safe Tory seat at the time.


A lot of people assume that, but Labour becoming little more than a fringe party in many of them didn't really start to happen until the '80's. Some of them (notably Herts) were actually better bets for Labour then than they are now... and this is the case with just about all of them in the '60's.

Labour 301, Tory 297, Liberal 14, SNP 7, PC 2, Ind Lab 1 [Blyth], "Dem Lab" 1 [Lincoln].
Tories won the popular vote by about 200,000 votes. Labour formed a minority government and called a new election in October.
The election was a failed gamble on the part of Heath; he carefully picked a fight with the NUM in the hope that the resulting miners strike would cause a big rise in anti-union sentiment and result in a nice big win for him. Didn't work out that way...  


Yeah, at the moment they only have one and only won it because it was a new seat and anti-Tory tactical voters weren't sure to to vote for. They lost their other seat (held by the then Shadow Sec of State for Scotland) to Labour following major boundary changes.
The Tory collapse in Scotland came in two waves; 1987 (which was partially turned back in 1992) and 1997... when they lost every single seat they had in Scotland. Both 1974 elections were seen (at the time) as bad 'uns for the Tories north of the border. Tells you have much times have changed really.

A much larger Labour majority; there were still a load of Labour seats with tiny electorates back then (inner city seats being the obvious but not only ones; Abertillery falls into that catagory as well. And if it had been a seperate seat this year the bizarre civil war in the BG CLP wouldn't have happend as Law would *already* be M.P for Abertillery...) and then you have all the seats that were much better for Labour on those boundaries; Brecon & Radnor included a lot of territory that's now in some of the Valleys seats for example.


Well spotted. It's especially stark if you control for demographic changes...


And Northern Lancs

:)

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Any suggestions for the next one to do?

according to the map of 2005 on the BBC website (where you can click on a seat and it shows the results) I was looking around  there were some other seats that were kind of close with the conservative party in second, any chance the conservatives pick up seats in Scottland next election.

Oh yes, there's still quite a few seats were the Tories are fairly strong in Scotland. Dumfries & Galloway (the Galloway part was the Tories only M.P from Scotland's seat in the 2001-2005 Parliament) is probably a very unlikely gain now, but they are breathing very hard down the SNP's necks in Angus and Perth & North Perthshire. In the longrun they should really think about rebuilding themselves in Edinburgh... and then there's always that Borders seat held by Mike Moore (LibDem).
One hope of their's that was dashed with the boundary changes was Ayr; it were cut into pieces and largely combined with an ultra-Labour old mining area (the core of the old Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley seat)...

1983 would be fun- esepcially to see how well the Alliance polled (or didn't poll in all honesty) in certain seats



I agree. The Conservatives can only benefit in Scotland from an SNP downturn combined with a little tactical voting to unseat them. The fact they won Dumfrieshire, Clydesdale and Tweedale instead of Dumfries and Galloway as was expected was the strangest suprise. However with the removal of Dumfries and the Lanarkshire ex mining villages (where the SNP poll strangely well in local council elections) made it easier for them to take. Any strong movement against the Lib Dems could see them loose Berwickshire; unlikely but it is still early days.

In the Scottish Parliament they are doing better in terms of FPTP seats holding 3; Ayr, Galloway and Pentlands. Perth is in reach next time round, but other seats like Eastwood are not as within reach as they should be.

You can find the Feb 1974 results here (http://www.psr.keele.ac.uk/area/uk/ge74a/ge74aindex.htm) if you are interested. I'm not sure how reliable these results are.

Horsham & Crawley was an interesting seat - it went 42% Con - 33% Lab - 24% Lib in Feb74. Methinks that if it had existed in 1966 (the Horsham of then covered the entirity of the North of West Sussex), it might well have gone Labour: Just imagine that, Horsham represented by a Labour MP.

I liked the slightly hidden joke: Never, ever ask the British electorate who governs ;)

Interesting; seems to be using similer sources to me. Well if someone else is using them they can't be *that* far out (or can they? *shudders at some of the cock-up's made in newspaper reports of the 2005 election...*).


IIRC the Tory majority in Horsham in '66 was something like 8,000 (in an extremely oversized seat so that's nowhere near as impressive as it looks)... and seeing as how the areas lost to Chichester are (IIRC) extremely Tory... Horsham & Crawley would probably have gone Labour in '66... ;D ;D ;D


;) ;D

There was an excellent cartoon done at the time (no, I'm not that old. It was reprinted in a magazine a few years ago) showing Heath and his cabinet walking through a devastated urban landscape and Heath saying something along the lines of "I'm just wondering if it was the wrong question to ask".

Only 6,000 apparently, in a constituency with an 88,000 electorate. Also, the suggestion that there are any non-Tory voters in that bit of Sussex will get you hunted like a fox (no, literally).

Also, whilst you might not have been alive in 1974, you clearly are Anuerin Bevean reincarnate.

88,000. It seems the Conservatives even then suffered from an electoral bias towards inner city and urban seats :)

Al,

I, personally, would be interested to see 1992...the election where Labour snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

BTW...is there any possible way you can indicate if a seat flipped? and from what party?

And now for 1983...

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Couple of points:

*The SDP have their own colour [a sort of purple; SDP colours were red and blue so...] which shows up fine on my computer, but might not on some others. If you get confused, I can give you a list of SDP seats.

*Interesting to note that, despite the landslide, very few Tory seats had majorities over 40%. It's also strange to see so many Labour strongholds with such small majorities.

*This election was the last one in the Pre-Benn era of Chesterfield

*As always if the forum auto-resizes the map, just copy it onto a paint file to look at.

() + () = Al

;D

Argh the 1983 is horribly depressing! Is it possible to do a %vote map? It would be interesting to see how it maps the "spoiler effect" of the SDP.

I could do that, yes (probably on a smaller scale map with some zoom-in's just for my sanity).

It is lovely to see all that blue...and very little yellow!

If only Shirley had run against Roy or David had beaten Roy, then maybe we could have had a little more purple on that map.

I might do a map under my wet dream scenarios of the Alliance taking some chunks out of the Tories and Labour or something.

Like winning East Kilbride :)

This book had a very interesting scenario where the SDP did much better in 83 and finished second in terms of share of the vote…


http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1842751115/qid=1135885595/sr=8-3/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i3_xgl/026-6556848-0894018

Interestingly a further swing against Labour would have secured very few seats for the SDP – Owen always argued that the SDP’s failure in 83 was winning over sufficient wet Tories – however a small swing from the Tories to the SDP produces a fair few extra gains.

Here are the tables from the book…


Alliance poll 350,000 more votes (around 1% more than in reality) taken entirely from Labour:

Table 1 - 1983 General Election – Con: 41.4%, Alliance 26.6%, Labour 26.4%.

Conservatives – 403
+ 9 from Labour.
- 3 to Alliance.

Labour – 199
- 9 to Conservatives.
- 1 to Alliance.

Alliance – 27
+3 from Conservatives.
+ 1 from Labour.   


Labour fall into third place entirely due to defections to the Conservatives: 

Table 2 – 1983 General Election – Conservatives 44.7%, Alliance 25.4%, Labour 25.3%. 

Conservatives – 420

Labour – 185 

Alliance – 24


Alliance gains five percent from the Conservatives and five percent from Labour.

Table 4 – 1983 General Election – Conservatives 37.4%, Alliance 35.4%, Labour 22.6%

Conservatives – 346
- 51 to Alliance.

Labour – 184
- 25 to Alliance.

Alliance*
+51 from Conservatives. 
+25 from Labour.   

* Shirley Williams retains her seat.

In this scenario further defections by Labour MPs would be very likely, most interestingly would Tony Blair newly elected Labour MP for Sedgefield defect to a surging and invigorated SDP? When a newly elected MP he made loud noises about the party having eighteen months left to live unless it radically reformed, after such an electoral meltdown would he have just jumped ship? Brown was and is too tribal a politician to defect from Labour and would have been one of a small voice of Labour moderates probably including himself John Smith, Roy Hattersely etc…

One thing the article does suggest is that it would have been nearly impossible for the SDP/Liberal Alliance to have come second in terms of seats even with where it to do spectacularly well, indeed it would probably have had to have come first in its share of the vote to have come second in terms of its tally of MPs.         

That is a fantastic book and well worth buying as it deals with alternative poltiical histories rather than just history itself.

And here is '92:

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*It's interesting to see how very different electoral geography was then; one big difference between now and '92 is in multi-cultural and well educated liberal areas (where Labour did a hell of a lot better in '92 than '05) and in working class suburbs (where the situation is reversed).

*An interesting feature of the election was regional backlashes; the largest was in Wales (where you'll note that Labour racked up a load of majorities in South Wales that were even more jaw-droppingly huge than normal. Also note the narrow win in Pembroke; Labour toppled a 10pt majority there and in a seat that's only previous Labour M.P (in the '50's and '60's) had actually been extremely conservative) and the PC gain in Ceredigion) while the big one in Scotland from '87 was drawing back somewhat. There was also a smaller one in East Lancashire, caused largely by textile job losses IIRC.

*Also note that the tiny Tory majority was based on a freakish string of extremely marginal wins...

1992- The election the Conservatives wished Labour had won :)

Thats probably true. Heh.

Thanks Al.

I bought the book within about a week of it going on sale. It's interesting but a number of the scenarios aren't really that plausible.

Whether the Alliance would have gotten 5% from both parties is highly debatable on this counterfactual. I think you have to go back long before the 83 election campaign began to get a sensible counterfactual build up here.

For example, it seems eminently more sensible to have had David Owen beat Roy Jenkins in the 1982 leadership contest as his thoughts on where to position the SDP would have been:
1. Electorally better
2. More independent from the Liberals than it turned out to be.

The fact that the SDP and Liberals ended up fighting half the constituencies each and never against one another is actually the result of a slip of the tongue by Bill Rodgers. It would have been quite plausible to see the two parties compete in 400 seats whilst leaving 250 as "target" seats.

With this greater independence, I think one can safely say that there is no more joint platform, though a united approach would be needed in the target seats and no large divergences in policy.

On the basis of an optimistic election result, one might see the following:
SDP gain 6 points from Labour and 4 points from Tories
Liberals gain 7 points from Tories and 3 points from Labour.
As you can see, they both gain 10 points total, but in different ways. This is roughly the scenario I am working on.

Look forward to reading it, I agree that the SDP gaining both 5 pionts from the Tories and 5 pionts from Labour in circumstances of 1983 seems unlikley.

And here's 1979...

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As you can see it was quite a strange election and very much a warning shot of future regional polarisation; note the fact that while it looks like a Tory landslide in the Southeast, up North Labour actually held a load of traditional marginals; including bellwethers like Bolton West, Keighley and of course Bury.
It's almost certain that Labour would have won had the election been called in 1978 and it's very likely that they'd have won had the turkeys (read: SNP) not voted for an early Christmas (and you can see how Scottish voters rewarded the SNP for that) in the no-confidence vote, and the election been held a few months later. Liberals did badly as well (look how hard Thorpe went down in North Devon...)

This was also the last election in which the real counties were used to draw constituencies from...

What's southern Wales like? It appers there's a strip there that always vote ultra-Labour.

Cardiff? From what I've seen, it's filled with the very definition of a Labour voter.

The bit you are referring to is basically a paradise for Al given that all that used to happen there was coal mining. Coal miners were usually a very tribal lot who voted Labour heavily.

Just to the south of the Labour voting belt is a blue strip, which is Cardiff and the Vale of Glamorgan. Some of the constituencies went Tory, some didn't.

That would be the Valleys; an old coalfield/steel area (I say old but to be fair quite a lot of strip mining goes on down there these days. Still one deep pit open and it's doing pretty well). These days the economy there is based around manufacturing (although most of the factories are along the coast; a hell of a lot of people commute down from the Valleys to places like Baglan Bay daily).
Been solidly Labour since the '20's. Only serious challenges to Labour at a national level is the occasional Independent Labour candidate (one got elected in the seat based around Ebbw Vale last year for example) and frankly they don't count... last serious threat at national level from *outside* the mainstream Labour movement was the Communists... and even then only in one part of the Rhondda Valley...
Politically the whole area is extremely left wing economically and IIRC it has the highest rates of union membership in the country. It's also one of the most socially conservative parts of the U.K (although as Chris Bryant proves it's certainly not a bigoted area).

Likewise with Lanarkshire

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I use a slightly differnt colour scale from Al's, but it shows the deep red, almost 'brown' Labour vote in it's Lanarkshire heartlands.

Were some steelworks in the bits that used to be in Monmouthshire though. And if you go back far enough there was some iron mining as well.


And there families still do ;D


Just like to take this oppertunity to point out that the extremely dark red constituency in western Cardiff was Mr Speaker's seat...

Any suggestions for the next election to do? Anything from 1955 onwards is mappable.
I'm thinking of doing 1964 or 1997, but am open to suggestions :)

O.K :)

I wouldn't mind seeing Youainteverhaditsogood at some point.

And now for '55...

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1. Obviously a hell of a lot of things have changed in half a century; both demographically (looks at rural eastern England and thinks of a time when agriculture was still a big employer; looks at how London has both expanded and got "thinner" etc, etc...) and also politically (looks at the Orange vote in central Scotland... and also much of Lancashire, especially Liverpool and Manchester, looks at north/west Wales before that bloody dam was built, looks at the crooked deals with Tories that kept the Liberals semi-alive... etc, etc...).
2. And yes, your eyesight is fine, the Liberals won a seat in Bolton, a seat in Huddersfield and also Carmarthen [later lost to Labour in a by-election; Labour's candidate was DLG's daughter] while failing to win any in the West Country or the Highlands...

That Year has always made me a tad misty-eyed, what I'd give to have another year (and woman!) like that..

1955

Al,
The Labour vote in NW Wales will come back IMO. Can you do 1945 ?

It's certainly *started* to... after all we hold Ynys Mon again and have re-asserted our natural (ie; 2nd at the very least) place in Caernarfon, following boundary changes it'll be ours again methinks.
But the question is how far the road to recovery will go... know what? I think we need another Goronwy Roberts...


Not at the moment; for one thing I don't have the results by constituency :(

Speak for yourself, but I wouldn't mind seeing another Welsh Dragon.

Can you do a Welsh map for the other parties please? (I.e Dem from Wales, Ind from Wales, Others from Wales)

Yep; which election? Could do it for the last Assembly election if you want.

I actually mean icons (as in the icons showing the party and location of members), but if you are offering the Welsh Assembly then please do! Either 1999 or 2003

Al

Whats the blue dot in the middle of the Yorkshire Coalfield ?

Doncaster believe it or not. Not the only working class town to vote for the Tories by narrow margins either (look at Carlisle, Glasgow and Sunderland). IIRC the old Donny seat didn't include all the town (as in the urban area; it probably included the county borough. I think Donny was a county borough...).

1955 was a year where the Conservatives in Scotland (or rather Scottish Unionists) polled over 50% of the vote IIRC.

Al, can you tell me which parties have held Orkney and Shetland when?

Been Liberal since 1950 when Jo Grimond took it back off the Tories. It was Tory in 1945 (although marginally so). I think it was always Liberal before the whole National Government mess (not entirely sure though) though. Not sure about '31 or '35.

Since when has it been one constituency? I seem to recall that in the 18th century, although Scotland as a whole was woefully underrepresented, Orkney and Shetland were two separate constituencies.

Since 1918 at the very latest. Boundaries before 1918 were very strange, especially in Scotland...

In the 18th century, four or six (not sure which) of the smallest Scottish counties were represented only in alternate parliaments.

It was six... Buteshire was paired with Caithness, Clackmannanshire with Kinross (interestingly the various "Ochil" seats post-1997 are a bit like that) and Cromarty with Nairnshire. Amusingly Midlothian was technically called "Edinburghshire"...

Oh and I've checked this and Orkney & Shetland was just one seat back then... sort of... Kirkwall was in the Tairn Burghs constituency (along with Tairn, Dingwall, Dornoch and Wick).

Crazy, eh?

Oh well, not everything I say is true in every case.

;D

In practice it's quite close to being true though; IIRC Kirkwall was fairly large (well... relatively speaking...) back then.

The 'burgh' thing was a throwback to the pre 1707 Scottish 'Pairlament' (note the spelling :) ) when the Burgh had a priveleged position in the local hierarchy which entitled it in many cases to a higher representation that the whole county surrounding it and even over larges cities (Rutherglen had a higher status than the much larger Glasgow until the 1800's). This lead to those strange constituencies. That status, while dwinding, was only officially abolished in 1975.

I made this map as an experiment; it's the % vote for Labour in the 2004 Euro elections (by local authority in England and Wales, by Holyrood constituency in Scotland). One shade represents one %. Note that the highest Labour vote (Blaenau Gwent in South Wales) was actually a few %'s over 50%; but as it was the only local authority with over 50% I kinda fudged things to keep my sanity... oh yes... suprisingly there wasn't a single local authority under 7% (there were several Westminster constituencies under that in 2005; evidence of tactical voting if I ever saw it...).

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Despite what is written on the map, this is 1959 (not 1955)...

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In many ways an election with very similer patterns to 1955, but with some important exceptions here and there; SuperMac solidified much of the South East on a permanent basis and the beginnings of the long trend to Labour in Lancashire is just about spottable. Thorpe's narrow win in North Devon is also quite significant... and you can also see the New Towns beginning to have an electoral effect here and there.

Who was that in Caithness and Sutherland?

The former Conservative M.P for the seat. Not sure why he left the party. Oddly no Liberal ran against him; only a Labour candidate did.

Maybe they supported him?

Do you have the complete 55 and 59 results for the seat?

Seeing the Conservatives (Scottish Unionists) holding Rutherglen and 5 other Glasgow seats is rather strange looking back :) The Conseratives then began their steady decline in Scotland.

Am I seeing this right? Nottingham, three tory seats? Also, what was that Fife burghs constituency called, which places went in it, and was it the last such constituency left or was there another one that I overlooked?

Yes... not sure quite how accurate as I don't own a copy of an authoritative source (I intend to get one, but I think they've been out of print for a while...) but it'll be pretty close...

1959: Ind 12,163, Lab 6,438
1955: Con 10,453, Lab 5,364, Lib 2,674


Yes; the Tories gained Nottingham West (the main predecessor seat to the current Nottingham South IIRC) that year (the Tory candidate is currently an M.P for a large rural constituency in Lincolnshire...). The Nottingham South of '59 included the suburban core of the current Rushcliffe constituency (Trent Bridge et al). I think the ultra-safe Tory seat Leicester SW included the Oadby/Wigston area now in Harborough.


There were two Fife burghs seats; Dunfermline (which included the core of Dunfermline itself (but not by the looks of it the newer suburbs), Rosyth et al and several towns to the north east. Not sure which... I will have to check...) and Kirkaldy (which included Kirkaldy and another collection small towns).
There were certainly some other split constituencies in Scotland back then... Stirling & Falkirk for instance. Clackmannan & Stirlingshire East (?) was another. Dunbartonshire was split up as well.
And there was one in England as well; Dudley, which included the core of Dudley itself along with most of Stourbridge. Reason was because Dudley was still techically in Worcestershire, was too small to be a seat on it's own.


That's sectarianism for you :P
Actually they began the steady decline *in* 1959; I think Labour picked up a Glasgow seat that year and also Lanark. Most of Lanarkshire ceased to be as marginal as it was in '55 as well.

What happened to the Tories in rural Scotland?

In most cases it was the rise of the Tartan Tories* that did them in, in parts of Aberdeenshire it was the recovery of the Liberals from the point of near death. Even now they aren't totally dead in those areas; Angus and Perth & North Perthshire are very marginal. But they actually finished behind *Labour* in Gordon... (first time Labour had come second in that part of Aberdeenshire since 1959 in case anyone is interested).

*The SNP

a little off topic but so there's really not going to be an election for a while right?  Will Blair still be PM at the next election if not when do you think will he step down.

Correct; election not due until 2010 (they can be called earlier though).


No


Hard to say... I think he's trying to get to some milestone date (like a decade in office) or something. Not sure... sometime in the next two years most likely.

Ah, so the Tories didn't run against him either? Now I see why this is confusing. :)
What's the Labour seat just north of Nottingham?
Ah yes, I'd wondered about why Stirling was a constituency of its own. :) Clackmannanshire and Stirlingshire North perhaps? That's what that one dark blue constituency looks like ... it's not split though. ??? So that's two pink constituencies, not three? Ah.

Exactly; I don't know anything about him... I'll have to see if he ran again in '64 and who for...

Wikipedia has full election data for the full life of Caithness and Sutherland:

Constituency page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caithness_and_Sutherland)

As a side note, just look at 1945 - that surely has to be a record of some kind. I have no idea what was used as a source, but the generally accepted source for pre-50 results is Craig's series of books. 50 and after is often based on www.psr.keele.ac.uk which uses The Times and Whitakers Almanack as its sources, which presumably means that data is double checked.

Ah; interesting.


I'm pretty sure that it is... must have been seen as a bit of an upset actually.
IIRC the defeated Liberal that year is some relation of the current M.P for the seat.

Wiki is eveloving intoa  good source. It is interesting to read about the university seats and the 'Steward of the Chiltern Hundreds' :)

Correct, he is the grandfather. Alistair Sinclair was created Viscount Thurso (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viscount_Thurso) in 52 after he had been ejected from the Commons. His grandson is also Viscount Thurso but has not had to disclaim as Viscount Stansgate did because hereditary peers no longer receive automatic seats.


It is quite variable - some areas are quite thorough, such as Surrey (some nutcase with too much time on his hands is responsible for that), whilst other areas like Shropshire are quite sparse, mostly because they haven't discovered computers there yet.

Is that a hint? ;)

I was thinking about doing something about that actually... hmm...

There's a guide and some vague attempt to co-ordinate our efforts linked from this page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:UKPC), though don't worry yourself too much about some of the more pernickety rules. If you need any help, I'll be happy to point you in the right direction (if it exists, which it probably doesn't - Just remember, there are 1 million articles on wikipedia, but 2 million administrative pages, thats what I call bureaucracy)

Can you do February 1974?

He has, the very opening post of this thread in fact.

OK time for 1966.
And as soon as it's possible I want to see the 22/23/24 trifecta. ;D

Hmm, for some reason I didn't pay attention to the date on it.

How about October?

We haven't had that one yet.

Three times in the 20th century there were huge, huge anti-Tory landslides with longterm implications for just about everything. The most recent was 1997...

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Obviously there isn't enough room hear to do justice to this election... so to give an understanding of the sheer scale of the Tory rout and the Labour landslide, compare this map to the 1992 one. And remember that the Labour leadership didn't actually think they would win a landslide (assuming that the last minute anti-Labour swings of 1992 etc. would repeat themselves)...

This map should have been titled "thingscanonlygetbetter.png".

In case anyone is a bit mystified about the map's title "1945 in space" it comes from a conversation between Neil Kinnock (then EU Commissioner) and Lord Callaghan (who died in 2005) during the 1997 Election programme on the BBC. I think it was Lord Callaghan who coined the phrase but will have to check my tape from BBC Parliament to find out.

Callaghan said it IIRC. Good line either way. "thingscanonlygetbetter.png" is reserved for a different map...

And now for 1964...

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The reason for doing this one now should be quite obvious (and if you don't know, have a look at the filename).

1964 was one of the most important and interesting elections of the 20th century... it was marked by both major trends (such as the strong movement towards Labour in Northern industrial towns and the fact that Labour couldn't *quite* crack more than just a few Southern marginals) and things that didn't last but are very important all the same; the obvious one of those is the wave of racist voting in the West Midlands and in parts of the South East; the most infamous result from that trend was the defeat of Shadow Foreign Secretary, Patrick Gordon Walker, to a nasty racist turd who ran on the following slogan: "if want a n*gger neighbour, vote Liberal or Labour", in Smethwick. Similer things happend in Birmingham Perry Barr and also Eton & Slough, and very nearly happend in Southall.
Two other things to note; first one is the fact that many seats lost by the Tories in 1964 have never been regained... and the second is the resounding defeat of "star" Tory candidate Ted Dexter in Cardiff SE at the hands of Jim Callaghan.

Where was patrick Gordon Walkers seat?

I believe Wilson's "presige seat" of Brighton Kemptown (little light pink one on the coast directly south of London, for anyone who doesn't know) was the most marginal in the country? Labour won it by only around something like 7 votes. Apparently many senior members of the local Tory party didn't vote as they were so confident of victory that they decided to celebrate instead... gutted!

Smethwick is at the eastern extreme of the Black Country; it borders and (please don't tell the locals this bit if you want to live) basically merges in with Birmingham. It was renamed "Warley East" at some point ('74 IIRC) and, after being expanded, became just "Warley" in 1997. It's current M.P is John Spellar (previously M.P for the abolished Warley West seat; most of which is now in Halesowen & Rowley Regis) who despite being a Londoner (if Bromley counts as London) is a very good fit for the area, ideology-wise (he's not *exactly* socially liberal...).
On this map it's the light-ish blue north of the very dark blue Birmingham Edgbaston and sandwiched between two pale pink Black Country seats.


Yep; 7 votes it was and the most marginal of the election. Joint 11th most marginal result since 1918 and the first time Labour had ever won a seat in Sussex.


;D ;D ;D

Any chance of a rundown on the top 10?

According to election.demon.co.uk (best site for U.K elections on the net, btw) they are...

1. Ilkeston (1931; National Labour) and Winchester (1997; LibDem) 2 votes.
3. Tiverton (1923; Liberal), Carmarthen (1974Feb; Labour) and Peterborough (1966; Tory) 3 votes.
7. Northwich (1929; Tory) and Worcester (1945; Tory) 4 votes.
9. Caithness & Sutherland (1945; Tory) and Sedgefield (1923; Tory) 6 votes.

Interestingly the most marginal seat of an election isn't always the one people *remember* as being the most marginal; most people think that Bob Cryer's Keighley was the most marginal seat in 1979, when it was actually the old Preston North.

And now for 1970:

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1. Although often thought of as an upset, if you take a long view the only suprising thing about 1970 was that it was as close as it was; throughout the 1966-1970 Parliament, Labour's popularity went into total meltdown and at the low point in 1968 were probably less popular than the Major Tories in the '90's. There had been a recovery in the popularity of the Government as it finally got out of the economic mess left to it by the Douglas-Home administration.
Polling day was a few days (or a day? can't quite recall which...) after a key England game in the 1970 World Cup; [in]famously the England goalkeeper was too ill to play, England were knocked out of the contest and working class voters got all depressed lowering their turnout by quite a lot. The old legend is that if Gordon Banks had played, Ted Heath would never have become P.M.
2. Enoch Powell and racial tensions in general played a disturbingly large role in the election result (especially in the West Midlands) but it's important not to exaggerate this. It's very unlikely that Powellism gave Heath his victory (note that (despite large swings) Powell couldn't even drag in the other two Wolverhampton seats in on his Rivers of Blood). The main reason for that was probably...
3... demographic changes in certain marginal seats. Labour were badly hurt in certain small town seats like Cannock, Bosworth, Leek, Dartford and (of course) Belper, by the growth of suburban and commuterville developments, while the impact of the collapse of agricultural employment as a result of mechanisation was devasting to the Party in many rural areas (especially in Norfolk).
4. Interesting results include Rossendale (Tony Greenwood retired, and with him went his personal vote), Cannock (where Jennie Lee was literally built out of her seat), Cardigan (where somehow, and I don't know how, the soft-Nat Labour M.P managed to fluke another term), Dudley (where Labour regained a by-election loss despite Powell), Merthyr Tydfil (where longserving Labour M.P S.O.Davies was deselected, ran as an Independent Labour candidate and won by a country mile) and of course... Belper. The irony of Belper is that had the new constituency boundaries not been delayed, Brown would have won.

Of course something which you didn't mention Al was that 1970 was a disastrous year for the Liberals. If you include Birmingham Ladywood (a seat they won in a by-election) they lost 7 of their 13 seats with Thorpe only scraping home by just 300 votes in North Devon. Even Wainwright lost Coln Valley to Labour against the national tide (though it always was a funny seat).

Its always interesting to see how the South West swings between the Tories and the Liberals/Lib Dems during good and bad Tory years - compare Torrington with 1964/66 for example - which reinforces my suspicions that 2009/10 will not be a good year for the Lib Dems if the Tories recover.

Ah yes; that's true, it was a dire election for them. They lost pretty much all the small "l" liberal fiscal conseratives that had been drifting towards them for most of the '60's; the loss of Orpington was probably as significant as it's gain a few years earlier. I do sometimes wonder what would have happend if they'd elected Lubbock as leader rather than Thorpe...


I would rather not like to remember the grotesque personality cult of Wallace Lawler...


Still is a funny area; the sheer amount of ticket splitting that people get up to there beggers belief...


It does seem to (it might have something to do with a cycle of protest voting) although as time goes by the politics of the area is getting increasingly fragmented and confused. There's half a chance that the LibDems might end up collapsing in on themselves.

Ah, yeah, Elastan Morgan. Had a number of close elections either way IIRC... in two or three different seats...

Elystan Morgan (Labour MP 1966 - Feb 1974) Cardiganshire is now (if anyone is interested) very high up in the University of Wales, Aberystwyth

How old is He ? I have driven from one end of the seat to the other today.

'66! '66!

Work has just started on 1966

:D JUBILATION :D

And he be 1966...

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Obviously one of my favourite Post-War elections :)

Enjoy!

A few notes:

1. Just like 1997 it's interesting to note quite how much worse the election could have been for the Tories. It might be interesting to speculate how different later voting patterns would have been if Yeovil, Truro or Hereford had fallen. Along that line, it's traditionally held in Shropshire that the Tories only held Ludlow due to the incumbent's large personal vote.

2. As ever, foreshadowing of later trends is spottable; once again Labour failed to gain southern marginals like Eastleigh, Colchester or Chigwell, but won northern ones by suprisingly large margins (look at York) and made some more first-ever gains (like Lancaster). Meanwhile the electoral effect of New Towns became very real in 1966.

3. Two unpopular Tory politicians of the previous decade were finally beaten in 1966 (in Hampstead and Monmouth). Tories would likely have held bother without their negative personal votes.

4. 1966 was Labour's best ever election in Wales.

Liberals lose Ceredigon (or Cardigan as it was then) for the first time in what .... history?

I knew the answer once. 1830s or something. Of course it was Conservative before.

IIRC the Tories last held Cardiganshire in the 1840's (not sure on the exact decade though) so since then. Certainly Liberal since Gladstone.

Nearest modern equivilent would be the Tories losing Lewes in 1997.

IMO the incumbent Liberal (at best a part-time M.P, at worst...) deserved to lose by a larger margin than he actually did...

Ah, allow me to elaborate (coming from the constituency in question)

In 1966, the Lib Dems lost Ceredigion to Labour on a swing of 4.5% from Lib Dem to Lab.  The Conservatives last held Ceredigion (or at least the borough constituency) when the seat was abolished in 1885.

Ceredigion 1964

Lib Dems 38%, Lab 31%, Con 20%, Plaid 11%

Ceredigion 1966

Lab 37% (+6%), Lib Dems 35% (-3%), Con 19% (-1%), Plaid 8% (-3%)

1987 now...

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An unusual election and one that never really led anywhere; in some ways it was the election most influenced by Thatcher and Thatcherism and resembles the (Presidential) election maps of the U.S in the '80's the most.
Some notes:

1. Scotland saw a huge backlash against Thatcherism and the Tories in general... something also seen in many big cities in Northern England...

2. ...but at the same time the Tories did very well in working class areas in the Southeast and the Black Country (and Labour did very badly in both as well o/c) including the first Labour defeat in Thurrock for generations, the loss of Attlee's old Walthamstow stronghold and the first Tory victory in Wolverhampton North East since the seat's creation. That more seats in such areas weren't lost is a credit to strong M.P's (epecially in Walsall) and strong local organisations in others (and Labour actually *gained* Wrekin (based around Telford which is home to a lot of ex-black country families) ridding Parliament of the repulsive Warren Hawksley... until he re-emerged in Stourbridge five years later).
The Tories also did very well in suburbia (look at the dark blue belts surrounding London, Brum and Bristol).

3. Meanwhile the influence of the Miners Strike in various coalfield constituencies deserves a mention; in NUM dominated coalfields (especially the more militant ones), Labour majorities surged to levels good even by historical standards, while in coalfields where the UDM was strong (ie; Notts. and Derbyshire) Labour did extremely badly, with heavy defeats in seats like Amber Valley and holds by shockingly low margins elsewhere. It seems improbable now, but Mansfield was the most marginal seat in England that year...

4. 1987 was, of course, a disaster for the Alliance and led towards all the messy goings on that resulted in the strange birth of the Liberal Democrats (Pete can fill you in on that ;)). Prominant figures from both the SDP and the Liberals either went down to defeat (notably Roy Jenkins in Glasgow Hillhead. The man who beat him is perhaps best known for pretending to be a cat and dressing up in a leotard on a reality TV show last year) or came rather closer to it than they, or anyone else, had expected. There were some good results here and there (rural Scotland was good for both parties, while the SDP did very well in Greenwich and also Plymouth) but if 1987 made anything clear, it was the fact that the Alliance's attempt to "break the mold" had, by and large, failed.

Don't encourage me.

Oh but I am encouraging you ;)

Outside London south of the Wash, Labour lost two seats, gained three, and held one.

Two gains actually: Norwich South and Oxford East. Both of which were traditionally marginal seats (well... sort of. Oxford East was the better half of marginal Oxford, while Norwich South had been strengthend a bit by boundary changes) and have large student & etc populations.

The two losses were Thurrock and Ipswich. Thurrock had been Labour since either 1945 or the '30's (can't recall which) and had been a safe seat for most of the post-war period (as it is again now). Ipswich had last been lost in 1970 (and by a handful of votes).

The hold was Bristol South; which was actually very close, because the incumbent Labour M.P (Michael Cocks) had been deselected by local Bennites.

I thought I saw a Labour seat in Plymouth on your map - maybe the lighter shades of Labour and SDP are just hard to distinguish. (And I knew anyways which seats Labour had South of the Wash in 83.)

That would be David Owen... :D


The lighter shades aren't always easy to distinguish no... SDP seats that year were: Plymouth Devonport, Greenwich, Woolwich, Caithness & Sutherland and Ross, Cromarty & Skye.

One interesting thing in this election was the different kinds of people who became Labour MPs: In Sheffield Brightside there was Britain's first blind MP(?) and a certain former home secretary. A handful of ethnic minority MPs entered the commons for Labour, including Keith Vaz in Leicester East and Britains joint first black MPs (Paul Boetang, Bernie Grant and Diane Abbot), all elected from London constituencies (Brent South, Tottenham and Hackney North respectively.

Yep; Blunkett was the first totally blind M.P. And the first to bring a guidedog into the Commons. Labour's majority went up a *lot* in Brightside that year; Blunkett is very popular in north Sheffield and was a high-profile leader of Sheffield City Council.


Although there was some very obvious racist voting in Tottenham (which turned marginal!) and in the other two London seats as well IIRC (but less obvious). Vaz got rid of another sh*t of an M.P o/c...

Bernie Grant was also a controversial candidate after remarking that a police officer (who was killed, or maybe just badly injured in a riot) as having gotten "a damn good hiding" remark." However, I only know that from when i watched some of the old coverage on BBC parliament. When I looked at the map I really was surprised by Tottenham's marginality.

Who was the MP for Leicester East that Vaz unseated?

I'm suprised no one has mentioned the swap in support for the SNP in 1987? Lab gain Western Isles and Dundee East from SNP, whilst SNP gain Angus East, Banff and Buchan and Moray from Con.

Lab gain Western Isles (West) and Dundee East (East) from SNP
SNP gain Angus East (East) and Banff and Buchan and Moray (NE) from Con.

True; and as such a swing against Labour there was always likely, but the usual pattern of racist voting (ie; a big fall, followed by a recovery of some sorts next election) was very noticable in Tottenham. O/c only part of the seat is Tottenham; he must have lost the Wood Green bit.


Peter Bruinvels

from Wikipedia:

"A contorversial figure on the farther fringe of the Conservative right, Bruinvels volunteered on the floor of parliament to become the public hangman if the government restored capital punishment, and was scathing of what he regarded as the left-wing bias of the BBC, which he referred to as the "Bolshevik Broadcasting Corporation". Bruinvels was also a fierce critic of sex education in schools which he regarded as libertine propaganda. "

Not hard to see what you meant!

Whatever happened to the Mini Hangman? He was selected to fight The Wrekin in 1997, and he was defeated.

I'm pretty sure he's on the General Synod of the Church of England now... he certainly was a few years ago.

Bruinvels was stridently, militantly rightwing but many Labour and Tory activists and Cllrs in Leicester remembered him as a fairly pleasent man... interestingly he defeated Hewitt in '83 (She ended up winning the next-door seat, Leicester West in '97). 

Without putting too fine a point on it, no one in Wellington remembers him as being very nice, even on a personal level. Interestingly enough, when the new "Wrekin" seat was drawn (even now more people in the Telford seat live on the slopes of the Wrekin than do in the Wrekin seat; which only really contains the peak) it was assumed to be safely Tory; until the local Tories picked Bruinvels.

For those that don't know the area; there is a good Labour vote in most the new north Telford (largely owner-occupied) estates, in the southeast parts of Wellington (ie; the dodgy bits) and also in the old core of Shifnal. There are decent sized Labour minorities in bits of Newport, the southern part of Albrighton and some of the villages (although I forget which ones). The rest of the seat is/should be strongly Tory in General Elections (locally a lot of middle class areas, like Leegomery (which is largely in the absurdly named Apley Castle ward), Newport or north Wellington vote LibDem).

Two other things found out;

1. The Tottenham Tories got disiplined in some way in the '90's for race-baiting and certainly had a dodgy reputation for it throughout the '80's...
2. The swings against the Tories in Plymouth were likely the result of job losses brought about by a botched Defense privatisation.

Can I put in a request please? Namely Wales Notionals 1992 - 2005 (including Assembly constituency results)?

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A map of local elections in Wales by ward...

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1. Wherever possible, this is based on the 2004 election results... but sadly not all councils have them up on their websites anymore. This means that changes via by-elections and so on, probably feature in a couple of areas.

2. As the point of this is to (try) to show local strengths for each party, Indies have only been shown when they are the only councillers in a given ward. The exception to this is Blaenau Gwent.
Note that in Wales, Independents have a much wider range of political views than in England... but do note that they tend to verge on Condependent in Pembrokeshire.

Indeed, this is the impression I get having lived in Powys and Ceredigion. At Election 2004 (and unchanged as we've not had any by-elections at all) the result was:

Ind 16 Plaid 16 Lib Dem 9 Lab 1

and so Ind + Lib Dem + Lab coalition was established.

One ward in Ceredigion that suprised me, was the yellow one betwixed Aberaeron and Lampeter. I knew about the rural wards south/east of Aberystwyth o/c.

*blows dust off thread*

The Second Election of 1974:

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A bigger map can be found in the Gallery.

Notes:

1. This was basically a re-run of the election earlier in the year, though this time Labour won a majority (though a tiny one). 1974F is on the first page of this thread, btw.

2. This was also the SNP's best ever showing in a Westminster election.

bump.

I'm bumping all the good map threads.

Superbump.

Can you do 2002?

There was no General Election in 2002.

Surely you mean 2001, no?

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Yes, 2001.

There is one question that has always been puzzling me about 2001 and that's the divergence of the nationalist parties.

SNP 1997: 22.08% 2001: 20.07%
Plaid 1997: 9.94% 2001: 14.27%

Can this be explained in maps showing the percentage change between 1997 and 2001 in each seat for Plaid and the SNP?

Probably.

But combine a strong year for the Lib Dems and a weak year for the SNP and in Scotland it's simply a change within the 'not Labour' vote. It reversed (to an extent) in 2007.

The SNP has always been relevant all over Scotland. PC can contract to the point of invisibility outside the Welsh-speaking areas, and it did in the 1990s. Even in good years, there are corners of the Principality where PC remains a minor party. You'll probably find a massive increase in 2001 in places like the Valleys.

They dropped massively in 2005. For one reason: Rhonda-Cynon-Taff. Al knows precisely what I mean.

Not sure about massively, but there were large falls in places. Rhondda is the obvious one, but the drop in Merthyr was quite sharp when you consider the low base.

*blows dust off thread*

The Second Election of 1974:

A bigger map can be found in the Gallery.

Notes:

1. This was basically a re-run of the election earlier in the year, though this time Labour won a majority (though a tiny one). 1974F is on the first page of this thread, btw.

2. This was also the SNP's best ever showing in a Westminster election.
[/quote]

These are superb and fascinating maps.

Is there any prospect of the 2001, 2005 and 2010 general elections getting the same treatment?

Thread's a bit too old for posting, so will lock in a moment.

However: for 2005 and 2010, yes. Though with a nicer key for 2010. Both ought to be on the forum gallery. Not sure about 2001. If not, it's something to do at some point.