UK General Election, 2017 - Election Day and Results Thread

[YL]

Some of the swings in the south are... unreal.  Like we've all talked about Canterbury - but there's a bunch of other seats with similar increases.  Hove - Tory from until time began most likely until 1997, they regained it from Labour in 2010 before it went back to Labour in 2015) now has a 20,000 majority with a 15% swing from the Conservatives to Labour.  Brighton Kemptown, Tory since 2010 and before 1997 it was only Labour between 1964 and 1970: 10,000 Labour majority, swing of over 10% to Labour.  Portsmouth South - never Labour, Liberal Democrat from 1997 to 2015, Labour's share of the vote is up 20% and there's a 10% swing to Labour there as well.  Its not even just "metropolitan" areas where this is the case but even the rock-solid safe Labour seats - Labour got 17,000 votes of the Isle of bloody Wight - collectively, they and the Greens were only 10,000 votes behind the Tories (in a place that voted quite heavily to leave the EU).  That's the real interesting part of this election in my eyes...

I got the impression that the Tory candidate in Hove was not exactly the best choice.  The result is still stunning, though.

It's been observed in another place that recent local election results suggest Worthing is trending Labour, and this election saw Labour surges of nearly 20 percentage points in both East Worthing & Shoreham and Worthing West.  The former, in particular, which is the first seat westwards along the Sussex coast from Hove, had its majority cut to under 10% and finds itself on the marginal list.  Based solely on the size of the majority, it's more of a Labour target than, say, Cannock Chase.

Labour did do well in some traditional marginals.  I particularly noticed High Peak (7% swing) and Colne Valley because they're near here; results in the West Yorkshire marginals were generally not too bad though it was disappointing Calder Valley didn't fall.  I think the Labour performance in marginals was indeed worse in the Midlands (NB High Peak isn't in the Midlands, whatever official regional boundaries might suggest) outside Birmingham and the university-influenced Warwick & Leamington (it doesn't have a university in the constituency, but lots of students and academics at the University of Warwick live there).

[YL]

Best Labour vote share changes:

Bristol West +30.3 (!)
York Central +22.8
Truro & Falmouth +22.5
Cardiff Central +22.4
Hove +21.8
Bristol South +21.7
Norwich South +21.7
Portsmouth South +21.5
Bristol East +21.5
Canterbury +20.5

Best Conservative vote share changes:

Gordon +29.0% (!)
Clacton +27.2%
Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch & Strathspey +24.6
Ochil & South Perthshire +20.8
Ayr, Carrick & Cumnock +20.3
Boston & Skegness +19.8
Ashfield +19.4
Aberdeen South +19.3
Banff & Buchan +19.2
West Aberdeenshire & Kincardine +19.0

Best Lib Dem vote share changes:

Richmond Park +25.8
Bath +17.6
Oxford West & Abingdon +14.8
Twickenham +14.7
St Albans +13.9
Witney +13.7
Vauxhall +13.7
Kingston & Surbiton +10.3
Winchester +10.2
St Ives +9.4

Worst Labour vote share changes:

Ochil & South Perthshire -8.4
East Renfrewshire -7.3
Aberdeen South -6.2
Paisley & Renfrewshire South -4.1
Dumfries & Galloway -3.8
Stirling -3.4
Ayr, Carrick & Cumnock -3.4
Richmond Park -3.2
Twickenham -2.3
Kilmarnock & Loudoun -1.5

Worst Conservative vote share changes:

Richmond Park -13.1
Battersea -10.8
Chelsea & Fulham -10.3
Kensington -10.1
Hampstead & Kilburn -10.0
Putney -9.7
Tooting -8.8
Vauxhall -8.6
Westminster North -8.5
Hove -8.4

Worst Lib Dem vote share changes:

Bradford East -27.7
Gordon 21.1
Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch & Strathspey -19.0
Hornsey & Wood Green -15.7
Ross, Skye & Lochaber -15.0
Burnley -14.4
Berwickshire, Roxburgh & Selkirk -14.0
Cardiff Central -13.7
Ashfield -13.1
West Aberdeenshire & Kincardine -12.8

[YL]

Given how concentrated the good Tory performances were in Scotland and the bad ones in London, here are lists excluding those.

Best Tory performances outside Scotland:

Clacton +27.2
Boston & Skegness +19.8
Ashfield +19.4
Heywood & Middleton +18.9
Mansfield +18.5
Stoke on Trent North +17.9
Burnley +17.5
Stoke on Trent Central +17.2
Redcar +17.0
Rother Valley +17.0

Worst Tory performances outside London:

Hove -8.4
Witney -4.7
Esher & Walton -4.3
South West Surrey -4.1
Reading East -3.7
Brighton Pavilion -3.6
St Albans -3.5
Warwick & Leamington -3.5
Oxford West & Abingdon -3.3
Winchester -2.8

[YL]

Liverpool wasnt a coal mining area though (a bit around St Helens, but not to anything like the extent of S Yorks other parts of Lancashire). It wasnt even a major manufacturing centre like Manchester. It was chiefly a port city, with a huge Irish immigrant population, so maybe that legacy has meant it stayed more outward looking?

I struggle to believe that Hillsborough would have had such a huge impact on local politics.

And yet Liverpool votes well to the left of other working class areas (80% labour, as opposed to 60% labour in Newcastle, Sheffield, Leeds - lower than that in smaller towns like Dewsbury)

And Liverpool was much stronger remain territory than Leeds, or Sheffield, or Birmingham. Which are all wealthier cities. Even Knowsley voted to remain, Knowsley!

They don't read the Sun.

Also, from time to time you get these stories where someone on the British right says something rude about Liverpool and its people.  You never get this about Leeds, Sheffield or Birmingham (unless mocking of accents counts in the last case).  That must help to give an impression to the people of Merseyside that the Tories have a fair amount of contempt for them, which leads to the embarrassing election results even in relatively posh parts of the Liverpool area (see Sefton Central).

[YL]

Which constituency has the lowest winning vote share? Ceredigion was won with 29.2%; are there constituencies which were won with less than that?

It was Ceredigion, followed by Belfast South and Lanark & Hamilton East; the latter was an absurdly close three-way result, with Labour only 360 votes behind the SNP winner but coming third.

Speaking of which, it's noticeable that Labour came very close in a lot of Scottish seats; there were seven where they were less than 2 percentage points behind the SNP winner.

[YL]

It's really not surprising at all in the British context (if anything, what's shocking is to see Labour win seats like Kensington). Thank God we have a country where class politics is still a thing.

I know, but class was not a defining characteristic of this election. If anything, that distinction has apparently diminished significantly this election. I'm definitely aware of Kensington, as it was the last seat called with like a 20 vote majority or something like that. Most London constituencies have and continue to vote Labour. I'm just curious as to why such core London seats have such a strong Conservative vote. I don't want to be the one that compares everything to American politics (and I do apologize in advance for the comparison), but it seems like the equivalent of Lower Manhattan being a Republican stronghold. Is it really just that the affluent in that part of London votes heavily Conservative (although apparently with greatly diminished numbers)?

The affluent vote in London has usually been strongly Conservative, yes.  That weakened this time, but Chelsea & Fulham, Cities of London & Westminster and Putney were safe enough to withstand the tide, unlike Kensington, which in spite of the reaction people have to its name isn't uniformly posh.

In most other cities, the urban middle class have largely abandoned the Tories.  See Bristol West, for example, which does contain some working class inner city areas but not enough to explain the scale of the Labour blowout.  I think there are two points; one is that central London has more really rich people than other cities and also that it has more people working in finance; I'm sure financial sector people are quite a bit more Tory than people in other sectors.

In places further out of the cities, especially once you get out of the areas generally regarded as part of the city proper, the middle classes do tend to vote Tory.  In spite of hints of a trend in their favour, I don't see a Labour MP for Sutton Coldfield any time soon.

[YL]

From Alasdair Rae's blog, http://www.statsmapsnpix.com/:

Conservative vote vs. deprivation score in England, 2017


and 2015 for comparison


It's a little weaker in 2017, but still quite strong.

And English consituencies coloured by winner and sorted by deprivation:

[YL]

Shame the last deprivation scale isn't interactive/more detailed.

The data (or at least the ordering of constituencies, which is all the graphic is based on) can be found here.

As mentioned in the caption there is one Tory seat, Walsall North, in the most deprived decile, and one Labour seat, Sheffield Hallam, in the least deprived decile.  Both, of course, changed hands.

Most deprived Tory constituencies, including all in the top three deciles:
1. Walsall North
2. Clacton
3. Blackpool North & Cleveleys
4. Great Yarmouth
5. Hastings & Rye
6. Stoke on Trent South
7. Plymouth Moor View
8. Torbay
9. Rochford & Southend East
10. Pendle
11. Telford
12. Boston & Skegness
13. South Thanet
14. Northampton South
15. Mansfield
16. Southampton Itchen
17. Camborne & Redruth
18. Morecambe & Lunesdale
19. Sittingbourne & Sheppey
20. Middlesbrough South & East Cleveland
21. North Thanet

Losses last week which would have appeared near the top of that list include Peterborough, Plymouth Sutton & Devonport and Portsmouth South.

Least deprived Labour constituencies in England, including all in the bottom four deciles:
1. Sheffield Hallam
2. Stroud
3. Warwick & Leamington
4. Sefton Central
5. Cambridge
6. Reading East
7. Harrow West
8. Wirral South
9. Leeds North West
10. Warrington South
11. Canterbury
12. Wirral West
13. Penistone & Stocksbridge
14. High Peak
15. Gedling
16. Enfield Southgate
17. York Central
18. Tynemouth
19. City of Durham


(NB this dataset is England only)