Yesterday Sara highlighted the Newsnight report into the political impact of reducing the number of Parliamentary constituencies. Democratic Audit have kindly provided me with a copy of their research which was used for the BBC headlines about how the Liberal Democrats were likely to lose out disproportionately.
You can read their report in full below, but it’s worth highlighting the significant caveats that Democratic Audit put on their results: “While it is possible to draw conclusions about how the proposals could impact on party representation, these findings must be regarded as purely indicative … It is very difficult to produce precise estimates of the likely partisan impact of these changes”. They describe their political projections as, “a rough estimate of the likely impact”.
Moreover, their calculations are based on making very little allowance for how parties will change their campaigning in response to changing boundaries. So ready a fair few pinches of salt and read on…
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7 Comments
And rough estimates would hurt us disproportionately, because of all the effort we put into targetting our winnable seats.
Assuming AV passes, it makes little difference, but it is good to see Labour’s “gerrymandering” bile completely scotched.
The new constantly changing boundaries will never be the same from one election to the next, and they will never coincide with natural community boundaries. MPs will lose all sense of identification with their local areas.
When the new constituencies are declared, eighteen months ahead of election day, all our incumbent MPs will have to go and campaign in new, artificially created constituencies, including large areas they do not now represent. They will have eighteen months to impress large numbers of electors they do not yet represent. Our advantages of incumbency will be lost. Democratic Audit took no account of that in their calculations.
We shall get hammered. And if AV does not pass, as the political betting community expect, then we shall get even further hammered.
Why on earth are we considering voting for this?
Yes, it is a gerrymander. But not against Labour. It is going to make the under-representation of the Lib Dems a great deal worse than it is now.
David: I think you’ve misunderstood how Democratic Audit have projected possible seat numbers, because rather than failing to take into account incumbency being weakened they have in fact taken it into account – and in the most extreme way (by effectively assuming that MPs won’t build up any incumbency benefit in areas coming in to their seat). Moreover, they’ve also worked on the basis that parties won’t change where they concentrate their campaigning efforts. To be fair to them, there are good reasons of expediency for making those simplifications (as without them it’s nearly impossible to make a projection and they did acknowledge the point in my emails with them) but what it means is that rather than being over-optimistic about Lib Dem MPs prospects, they are taking the unrealistic worst case scenario.
I would hope that any competant local party with an MP is already looking at what neighbouring areas might be added to the constituency and making plans accordingly.
@Nigel – Or indeed those in marginals/winnable seats. Our constituency is slightly too big and covers wards with 7 Lib Dem, 4 Conservative and 1 Independent councillors, so depending on where the cut is made this could rather improve our chances after coming second last time.
Mark,
I don’t agree. If you read the Democratic Audit article, they say they took account only of the problem where Lib Dem support is concentrated into a very small constituency, for example Berwick with 57,000 electors. But they have made no allowance for the much commoner problem that will occur when a perfectly normal-sized Lib Dem constituency is sliced in half, eighteen months ahead of the next election – as will happen in the majority of cases. Very often, that will mean combining an area where we have a slim majority with a neighbouring area where we are little known. As a result, we will often lose. That is what DA did not take into account. They did not paint us a worst case scenario. The reality will be a lot worse than their predictions!
Andrea, Colne is slightly too big? I must’ve missed that. Calder is almost spot on, Halifax & Hudds each slightly too small, that makes my estimations even more annoyingly complex. You’re the wrong side of Hudds to me, odds of us ending in the same constituency very small, but not impossible…