Mark Pack

It’s been a long established pattern of British politics that the higher you go up the social scale, the higher turnout is in elections. The 2010 general election is no exception but looking through the numbers one class dimension comes out. Overall turnout collapsed after 1997 and has since had a modest recovery, but the [...] »

Although I wrote and appeared in the media aplenty talking about the internet and its impact during the 2010 general election and in its immediate aftermath, there are thirteen posts from others that I've never quite got round to writing about or using in my work. So rather than have them linger forever in the [...] »

The likely explanation emerging for the Liberal Democrat vote share in the general election coming in much lower than even the immediately previous polls suggested is that there was a late swing away from the party, partly due to Lib Dem supporters being less willing to turn out (see, for example, this from ComRes). It’s [...] »

The question of whether or not uniform national swing (UNS) calculations are a sensible way of trying to turn national opinion poll vote figures into seat estimates has been much debated in the last few months. So how did UNS do this time round? Here is how the May 2010 result compares with a UNS projection [...] »

The small overall net loss of seats in this month’s general election understandably rather overshadowed the growth in the party’s share of the popular vote, which was up for the third general election in a row. The seat total was hit by the party not getting the lucky breaks in very close contests. The party won [...] »

Twenty largest Liberal Democrat majorities: Orkney and Shetland 51.3 Ross, Skye and Lochaber 37.5 Sheffield Hallam 29.9 Bath 25.2 Westmorland and Lonsdale 23.8 Norfolk North 23.4 Yeovil 22.8 Fife North East 22.6 Ceredigion 21.8 Leeds North West 20.9 Bristol West 20.5 Twickenham 20.3 Bermondsey and Old Southwark 19.1 Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey 18.6 Caithness, Sutherland and East Ross 16.8 Lewes 15.3 Hazel Grove 15.2 Colchester 15.1 Thornbury and Yate 14.8 Gordon 13.8 Southport 13.8 (Actually that’s 21, but the bottom two are tied) Twenty smallest Liberal Democrat majorities: Solihull .3 Dorset Mid and Poole North .6 Norwich South .7 Bradford East .9 Wells 1.4 St Austell and Newquay 2.8 Brent Central 3.0 Somerton [...] »

Twenty largest swings from Labour to Liberal Democrats: Redcar 21.8 Ashfield 17.2 Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney 16.9 Barnsley East 14.0 St Albans 13.9 Bosworth 13.8 Norfolk North West 13.4 Pontypridd 13.3 Maidstone and The Weald 12.9 Hemel Hempstead 12.5 Selby and Ainsty 12.4 Hull North 12.2 Wycombe 11.9 Canterbury 11.5 Chelmsford 11.3 Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford 11.2 Sedgefield 11.0 Northampton South 11.0 Brent Central 11.0 Wellingborough 10.8 Sheffield Brightside and Hills 10.8 Leeds North West 10.8 (Actually that’s 22, but the bottom three are all tied.) Twenty largest swings from Liberal Democrats to Labour: Edinburgh West -11.4 Orpington -9.5 Renfrewshire East -8.0 Paisley and Renfrewshire North -8.0 East Ham -8.0 Dunbartonshire West -7.9 Glenrothes -7.7 Paisley [...] »

A follow up as requested in the comments on my earlier post, this time showing what proportion of the electorate each of the main parties won in previous general elections and also the proportion who did not vote for any party:  »

Twenty largest swings from Conservatives to Liberal Democrats: Redcar 14.5 Westmorland and Lonsdale 11.1 Ashfield 10.8 Dunfermline and Fife West 9.2 Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney 9.2 Maidstone and The Weald 8.5 Brent Central 7.5 Ceredigion 7.2 Sheffield Hallam 6.9 Orkney and Shetland 6.6 Spelthorne 6.1 Bosworth 5.9 Bromsgrove 5.9 Bath 5.8 Hull North 5.7 Leeds North West 5.4 Canterbury 5.4 Wycombe 4.8 Newport East 4.5 Lewisham East 4.5 Twenty largest swings from Liberal Democrats to Conservatives: Hartlepool -15.0 Montgomeryshire -13.1 Orpington -12.2 St Ives -10.4 Cardiff Central -10.3 Meon Valley -9.4 Cornwall South East -9.1 Harrogate and Knaresborough -9.1 Winchester -9.1 Esher and Walton -9.0 Edinburgh West -8.7 Surrey South West -8.6 Berwick-upon-Tweed -8.3 Chesterfield -8.3 Crewe and Nantwich -8.3 Blaydon -8.2 Garston and Halewood -8.1 Windsor -8.1 Ludlow -7.8 Maidenhead -7.8  »

This is the first in a series of posts pulling out some of the constituency results which we’ll be running this week. The data is taken from Pippa Norris’s data set (for which thanks). Twenty highest Liberal Democrat vote shares: Orkney and Shetland 62.0 Westmorland and Lonsdale 60.0 Bath 56.6 Yeovil 55.7 Norfolk North 55.5 Twickenham 54.4 Sheffield Hallam 53.4 Ross, Skye and Lochaber 52.6 Lewes 52.0 Thornbury and Yate 51.9 Cheltenham 50.5 Ceredigion 50.0 Kingston and Surbiton 49.8 Southport 49.6 Taunton Deane 49.1 Hazel Grove 48.8 Bermondsey [...] »