U.K election maps

[Ben.]

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.

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.         

[Ben.]

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.

[Ben.]

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).