Mark Pack

Labour-Tory two-party politics is now the minority

By | Tue 10th April 2007 - 5:33 pm

Bad news for Labour and Conservative activists who don’t like those pesky liberals. Sorry folks.

I’ve been taking a look at the recently published Thrasher and Rallings projected results for the new Westminster Parliamentary boundaries.

Take all the seats where Labour and first and the Conservatives are second, or vice-versa, strip out the three-way marginals and … voila … you only have a minority of the seats in Parliament. Or to put it the other way round – the majority of Westminster constituencies are now not straight-forward Labour/Conservative contests.

Anyone fancy a bet on how long it will take the media to notice?

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5 Comments

  • James Schneider 10th Apr '07 - 6:21pm

    What constitutes a three way marginal?
    This illustrates how on the ball Cameron has been. You need Liberal votes to win a majority in a GE.

  • Mark Pack 10th Apr '07 - 8:13pm

    I took the three-way marginal definition Thrasher and Rallings used in their book.

  • Hywel Morgan 11th Apr '07 - 8:37am

    Is this that new – I remember us bandying about some statistic pre the 1992 election that we were second in more Tory seats than Labour.

    The problem was most of them were distant seconds – most of the close seconds were Labour.

    The key difference now is that I suspect we are a lot closer in a lot more seats than at that time.

    This is the tories key problem – not only do they need to win a lot of seats – they aren’t terribly close to winning a lot of those that they do need.

  • Hywel Morgan 11th Apr '07 - 7:43pm

    Are there any comparative figures for three way marginals in 92/7.

    My gut feeling is that there would be masses more now than back then.

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