UK Swing Maps

[DistingFlyer]

Here are maps showing the swing in each constituency in Great Britain from the elections of 1959 to 1997 (February 1974 excepted as I have no notional results for 1970 on the 1974 boundaries). I also did not illustrate swings in Northern Ireland given the large number of parties & independent candidates that contest those constituencies.

These may help to illustrate the variations between (and within) regions, such as 1959, 1979 & 1987 which saw regional differences discussed & analyzed at great length.

I must credit Sibboleth for drawing these maps (and of course David Boothroyd, who originated them). All data came from various Craig volumes.

1959


1964


1966


1970


1974 (October)


1979


1983


1987


1992


1997

[minionofmidas]

Nice.

[Supersonic]

Very interesting, thanks for sharing.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The most interesting one is 1987 because you can see the impact of the Miners Strike extremely clearly. Spot which major coalfield looks more like the rest of the country than other coalfields...

[LastVoter]

The most interesting one is 1987 because you can see the impact of the Miners Strike extremely clearly. Spot which major coalfield looks more like the rest of the country than other coalfields...

Nottinghamshire?

[DistingFlyer]

The most interesting one is 1987 because you can see the impact of the Miners Strike extremely clearly. Spot which major coalfield looks more like the rest of the country than other coalfields...

I assume you're referring to Kent - certainly they seem to have voted as southerners rather than mining territory.

Even stronger than the coal-area swings, of course, were Glasgow & Liverpool; Liverpool especially, which swung almost like 1997 with an 11% shift from Tory to Labour.


Also worth noting is Scotland in 1979 - it's often described as swinging to Labour but really it was just Glasgow & the surrounding areas that did so, while elsewhere saw similar swings to England (and produced a small net Tory swing in Scotland overall). The same could also be said for northern constituencies outside of the big cities.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I assume you're referring to Kent - certainly they seem to have voted as southerners rather than mining territory.

No, the Kent coalfield was tiny and only a small part of one constituency (Dover) so wouldn't count as 'major'. And was also ultra-militant, hilariously enough. I mean the Notts/Derbyshire coalfield.

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Yes, the bottom fell out of the historic Tory vote in a big way.

[DistingFlyer]

I assume you're referring to Kent - certainly they seem to have voted as southerners rather than mining territory.

No, the Kent coalfield was tiny and only a small part of one constituency (Dover) so wouldn't count as 'major'. And was also ultra-militant, hilariously enough. I mean the Notts/Derbyshire coalfield.

Just as the presence of people like Ken Livingstone were thought to have hurt Labour in London (he saw a big drop in the Labour majority in his own seat), perhaps MPs like Dennis Skinner & Tony Benn had a similar effect in that part of the country? Areas like Sheffield or Liverpool seem to like hard-left MPs so Labour wasn't damaged there (in fact, did quite well!).

The Tory by-election success in Ashfield a decade earlier also suggests that perhaps the mining communities in that part of the country are just a little more open to the possibility of not voting Labour than elsewhere.

[DistingFlyer]

Here's a map for 2001 as well; note the heavy Tory swing in Havering & the Essex seats bordering London, as well as a lot of blue-collar Northern seats - perhaps the effect of their leader?

[minionofmidas]

Just as the presence of people like Ken Livingstone were thought to have hurt Labour in London (he saw a big drop in the Labour majority in his own seat), perhaps MPs like Dennis Skinner & Tony Benn had a similar effect in that part of the country?

Pro tip. Just read up on the history of the Miners' Strike and then you won't have to engage in speculation.

Notts miners did not, in fact, strike.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

2001 was such a weird election. One of the main swing patterns is associated with foot and mouth disease...

Here's a map for 2001 as well; note the heavy Tory swing in Havering & the Essex seats bordering London, as well as a lot of blue-collar Northern seats - perhaps the effect of their leader?

There is sometimes a little bounce for parties in places that their leader is from/strong associated with: William Hague hails from Rotherham and there was a definite uptick in support in that area (not that it was a useful uptick in support, obviously).

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Just as the presence of people like Ken Livingstone were thought to have hurt Labour in London (he saw a big drop in the Labour majority in his own seat), perhaps MPs like Dennis Skinner & Tony Benn had a similar effect in that part of the country? Areas like Sheffield or Liverpool seem to like hard-left MPs so Labour wasn't damaged there (in fact, did quite well!).

The main issue wrt the Notts/Derbyshire miners and the strike has already been mentioned, though the divisions within the NUM were older and had already hurt Labour in Nottinghamshire in 1983 (c.f. the close call in historically safe Mansfield despite its popular - and right-wing - MP).

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The history of the Notts miners is a complicated one - the miners union in the area was formed by a merger in the 30s of the original miners union and a breakaway company union - and a lot of tensions that had existed for a while started coming to the surface in the 70s, mostly because the Notts coalfield was one of the most productive in the country and as the Notts miners began to demand that this was reflected in wages and agreements.

[minionofmidas]

What is surprising, actually, is the extent to which the feature extends into Derbyshire.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

What is surprising, actually, is the extent to which the feature extends into Derbyshire.

The boundary is very arbitrary in places, I guess. Though the huge swing in Amber Valley (which was not a wholly coalfield seat - as you know - obviously - but casual observers might not) was pretty obviously caused by David Bookbinder* being the Labour candidate again, not the strike.

_{*The 'controversial' Hard Left leader of Derbyshire County Council. A bogeyman of the national newspapers and so on.}

[minionofmidas]

Googling him, he was also the candidate in High Peak in 74 and 79... wrong place, wrong time; I suppose if Amber Valley had existed in 74 and he'd been the candidate, he would have gotten into parliament.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Googling him, he was also the candidate in High Peak in 74 and 79... wrong place, wrong time; I suppose if Amber Valley had existed in 74 and he'd been the candidate, he would have gotten into parliament.

He was even more unlucky than that: before '83 he had been selected for the Ilkeston constituency, which was a safe seat.* But then came the boundary changes in which the constituency was abolished: the eponymous (and v. Labour) town was added to Tory-leaning S.E. Derbyshire (renamed Erewash), and the rest was paired with a lot of Tory territory from the equally abolished Belper to former Amber Valley.

_{*Majority of 14.6% in '79. Might have been uncomfortably close in '83, but even he would have held on.}

[DistingFlyer]

2001 was such a weird election. One of the main swing patterns is associated with foot and mouth disease...

Here's a map for 2001 as well; note the heavy Tory swing in Havering & the Essex seats bordering London, as well as a lot of blue-collar Northern seats - perhaps the effect of their leader?

There is sometimes a little bounce for parties in places that their leader is from/strong associated with: William Hague hails from Rotherham and there was a definite uptick in support in that area (not that it was a useful uptick in support, obviously).

It seems that the Tory swings were either in areas they held or had no hope of taking - marginal Labour seats (or even their own narrow marginals) weren't so good to them. The national swing was comparable to 1987 or 1992 - around 2% - but not distributed well.

The huge drop in turnout, which varied from seat to seat, probably affected the swings too.

[minionofmidas]

2001 was such a weird election. One of the main swing patterns is associated with foot and mouth disease...

Here's a map for 2001 as well; note the heavy Tory swing in Havering & the Essex seats bordering London, as well as a lot of blue-collar Northern seats - perhaps the effect of their leader?

There is sometimes a little bounce for parties in places that their leader is from/strong associated with: William Hague hails from Rotherham and there was a definite uptick in support in that area (not that it was a useful uptick in support, obviously).

It seems that the Tory swings were either in areas they held or had no hope of taking - marginal Labour seats (or even their own narrow marginals) weren't so good to them. The national swing was comparable to 1987 or 1992 - around 2% - but not distributed well.

The huge drop in turnout, which varied from seat to seat, probably affected the swings too.

Yes - IIRC turnout held up *relatively* well precisely in those marginal Labour gains of 1997; it has usually been assumed that with higher turnout (of course there were reasons for the low turnout!) Labour would have made even further gains that year.

[afleitch]

With 2001, worth nothing the huge swing to the Lib Dems in a John Major-less Huntingdon. Also curious is the strong swing to the Tories in north east London but to Labour in north west London. Huge swing to Labour again in Eastwood which as a seat is probably all but lost to Labour now.

[DistingFlyer]

With 2001, worth nothing the huge swing to the Lib Dems in a John Major-less Huntingdon.

Also the strong Tory swing in a Paddy Ashdown-less Yeovil.

[DistingFlyer]

Here are swings by region from 1950 to 2001:

1950


1951


1955


1959


1964


1966


1970


1974 (February)


1974 (October)


1979


1983


1987


1992


1997


2001


2001 is perhaps the most unusual, with the swing pattern a near-total reversal from what one normally saw.

[DistingFlyer]

Using a map this time drawn by afleitch, here is the seat-by-seat swing for 1951. Not too many differences between regions, but within regions some very marked ones - most interesting are the higher-than-average Tory swing north of Glasgow and the Labour swing in the seats ringing around central London.
A Labour swing in Glasgow itself, as well as western Lancashire, portended what was to come later.

[DistingFlyer]

Here are swings for 2005 & 2010 (both regional & seat-by-seat).

I should note that the 2001 notional results I found for Scotland (the Labour vote excepted) didn't quite add up to the actual Scottish total for 2001, but as it wasn't too far off and was the best I could find it should do all right.

The 2010 map is the more interesting of the two, as you can see a lot of left-wing urban voters who'd gone Liberal (or Respect) coming back to Labour in places like Liverpool, east London, Birmingham etc. The same thing is true for the university-centered seats like Cardiff Central, Oxford East & Cambridge. However, some cities like Leeds, Bristol, Newcastle and (especially) Sheffield showed a continued Liberal swing. Sheffield was quite remarkable with a big swing in every seat - the effect of its leader, I'm assuming.

As for the Conservatives, they got some huge swings on both sides of the Thames estuary (especially in Kent), as well as the Black Country (but not Birmingham) and West/South Yorkshire. The Yorkshire swings, as well as the Teesside/southern Durham ones, were especially remarkable as those areas rarely see big Tory swings while the others often have.
The north in general had a closer-to-average swing than it has usually shown: 4.5% in the northwest, 6.1% in the north, and 6.5% in Yorkshire. West Yorkshire swung 6.8% and South Yorkshire 6.6%!
However, inner-city (as well as some wealthier urban) seats continued to be disappointing for them; one reason would be the aforementioned deserters to the Liberals coming back to Labour.

2005






2010

[Filuwaúrdjan]

There were larger swings in places that had taken a particularly harsh battering after the financial crisis hit. The particularly large swings in and around Teesside can mostly be put down to the Corus works in Redcar closing just before the election. Of course there were... um... a lot of places further south where Labour did even worse than the swings suggest, very frequently losing about half their 2005 vote...

[DistingFlyer]

There were larger swings in places that had taken a particularly harsh battering after the financial crisis hit. The particularly large swings in and around Teesside can mostly be put down to the Corus works in Redcar closing just before the election. Of course there were... um... a lot of places further south where Labour did even worse than the swings suggest, very frequently losing about half their 2005 vote...

Oh yes - a number of seats they lost in 2005 saw them come a very poor third in 2010 (such as Wimbledon). In general, though, it was Labour-held (or nearly-missed) seats that recorded double-digit swings against them.