I have question for the forum Brits.
It is harder to win government for the Tories than it is for Labour. e.g. Labour got a larger majority on a smaller vote share in 2005 than the Tories did in 2015. This difference is usually attributed to two reasons.
1) Labour vote collapses to virtually nil in many Tory safe seats, while the Tories still get half decent results in many Labour safe seats, resulting in many more wasted votes for the Tories.
2) The constituency map doesn't reflect actual populations. The Tories hold many overpopulated suburban seats while Labour holds declining rust belt areas.
I understand the first argument but not the second. Didn't the UK have a redistribution a few years ago? Wouldn't that have fixed the discrepancy? If not, how come?
The redistribution (we say boundary changes) didn't go into effect. The LibDems threw them out when they lost the AV referendum and the changes to the House of Lords around 2012-13 time.
However, the Tories put boundary changes in their manifesto, so we can assume 2020 will be fought on new boundaries, with a smaller house of 600 members.
But no boundaries can change the fact that the Labour vote is clustered into certain regions while the Tory vote is spread much more thinly.
