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 and Old Southwark 48.4
Carshalton and Wallington 48.3
Cornwall North 48.1
Bristol West 48.1
Twenty lowest Liberal Democrat vote shares:
Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East 9.5
Paisley and Renfrewshire South 9.5
Castle Point 9.4
Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath 9.3
Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock 9.3
Renfrewshire East 9.2
Glasgow South West 9.0
Dumfries and Galloway 8.8
Hayes and Harlington 8.7
Dagenham and Rainham 8.6
Coatbridge, Chryston and Bells 8.5
Barking 8.2
Dunbartonshire West 8.1
Airdrie and Shotts 8.1
Glasgow North East 7.7
Glenrothes 7.7
Ynys Mon 7.5
Na h-Eileanan an Iar 7.5
Kilmarnock and Loudoun 7.3
Glasgow East 5.0 (and therefore, by a slim margin, the Liberal Democrats did not lose any deposits at the election)
Follow @libdemvoice.org on Bluesky
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
How Chancellor Reeves torpedoed the economy
The Disneyfication of Haley Mills
Survation now put Andy Burnham 10 points ahead in Makerfield
Michael Meadowcroft: A Liberal of Intellectual Rigour and Uncommon Integrity
Peter Martin
Chris Cory
Ruth Bright
BigTallTim
Daniel Walker
12 Comments
Let’s hope we can get BME candidates into at least some of those top twenty next time (Sheffield Hallam can perhaps be excused…)
The problem is that many of those top 20 have big personal votes – Phil Willis had 56% of the vote in 2005 – but we lost. None of these seats are safe (except perhaps Orkney & S) in the sense that Witney is safe for the Tories, or East Ham for Labour.
Here in Kingston, perhaps 1 in 7 LD voters in local elections vote for LD candidates with “white” names, and not for LD candidates with BME names – and if that happened in a general election, then even if the new candidate got Ed Davey’s personal vote, we would lose to the Tories big time.
Getting BME candidates into parliament is not that easy!
A moderate source of pride that we didn’t lose a single deposit. Unique, I believe, in this election amongst the major parties.
How did Ceredigion get into the top 20?
The seat was only gained in 2005 [admittedly with a tradition] and there are four party politics in Wales – not the sort of seat where you would expect anyone to get half the votes cast.
Lots of Scottish seats in the list of low shares.
The saved deposits stat tells a story all of its’ own.
Of the larger parties LibDems lost none, tories lost two and Labour lost five.
Of the smaller parties UKIP saved 98, BNP saved 72, Greens saved 7, English Democrats saved one.
No deposits lost in this election!
A big change from 1950 when so many constituency results announced on the wireless ended with the comment ‘The Liberal candidate lost his deposit’. Luckily Harris, the Chief Liberal agent, had taken out an insurance policy against deposits being lost, so all the £150 deposits lost could be claimed back.
Wasn’t everyone keen to keep Nick Griffin from winning (or making a respectable showing at) Barking? Would the fear of dispersing the anti-BNP vote have depressed the Lib Dem one?
Liz W, which MP(s) in the twenty seats with the highest vote share do you propose to be deselected?
Agree mostly with Tim, incumbent vote makes most of the high shares. However, an incumbent who has received questionable publicity can lose even an (almost) safe Lib Dem seat, like we saw in Montgomeryshire.
I think that the reasons whether a constituency is won or not by a Lib Dem is up to the individual character of each seat and how well the profile of the Lib Dem candidate fits in it. Therefore, if Lib Dems want BME candidates to get elected, there should perhaps be some more research done in order to profile each seats and identify those where the BME candidates would have the best chance to get elected. These are not necessarily the same seats where the incumbent Lib Dem MPs currently hold the largest shares of vote. Unfortunately in some seats being a BME candidate might be an obstacle, in others it might even be a benefit. I’d imagine some good guesses where a BME candidate could succeed are seats in places such as parts of Inner London, Birmingham and Leicester.
MBoy, one reason why there are lot of Scottish seats in the list of low shares is that there are four instead of three large parties competing of the voters in Scotland, and so the average vote of share is bound to be lower.
Bruce, of course formerly a deposit was lost if a candidate did not receive 12.5% of the votes. It was reduced to 5% in mid 1980’s. I well remember the Liberal conference song ‘losing deposits’ sung to ‘Waltzing Matilda’.
When Nick Clegg took over from Richard Allen in Sheffield Hallam in 2005 the Lib Dem vote was almost unchanged. In this election, we held Cambridge and Edinburgh West with new candidates, both on reduced shares. So it isn’t inevitable that a new candidate will lose.
Sesenco, yes, but Sheffield Hallam wasn’t either in 2001 or 2005 among the seats with the highest Lib Dem share of votes, so probably the personal vote didn’t play a big part. Same applies to Cambridge in in 2005 and 2010. And I wouldn’t be surprised, if in all these cases of successful hand-downs of seats from a Lib Dem predecessor to a Lib Dem successor their profiles were relatively similar (Cambridge), or perhaps the profile of the successor suited to the preferences of the constituents even better than that of the successor (Sheffield Hallam).