PM's Election Maps And Stuff Thread

[Alex Richards]

I really should finish the series on the 2019 council elections. It slightly ran out of steam and now feels very depressing in retrospect.

 

[Ares96]

It is fascinatingly consistent that in AMS elections, whether in Scotland, Wales or London, the Lib Dems always paradoxically do better in the constituency part (which they usually find quite hard to win) than the PR list part (which they could get seats in more easily). A lot of their constituency voters seem to scatter to any random shiny minor party, that has absolutely no shot of winning a seat, when they get to the PR list part.

This also contrasts very interestingly with the FDP, who seem to be the exact opposite.

 

[Thande]

This also contrasts very interestingly with the FDP, who seem to be the exact opposite.

But that's more in line with what you'd expect for the generally broad but shallow support of liberal parties. With the Lib Dems, looking at the AMS results gives one the distinct impression that if they ever did secure PR, a big chunk of their voters would be like "thanks, now we can ignore all your Can't Win Here graphs and instead go and vote for some rando microparty that would struggle to reach quota under the Israeli electoral system".

 

[prime-minister]

But that's more in line with what you'd expect for the generally broad but shallow support of liberal parties. With the Lib Dems, looking at the AMS results gives one the distinct impression that if they ever did secure PR, a big chunk of their voters would be like "thanks, now we can ignore all your Can't Win Here graphs and instead go and vote for some rando microparty that would struggle to reach quota under the Israeli electoral system".

That's the great irony of the Lib Dems really- local ground game and tactical voting appeal are their big strengths, and yet since they know that strategy leaves them as a lot of voters' second choice and makes winning power impractical, a lot of them believe that means PR would serve them better overall despite the likelihood it would actually probably weaken their voter support for the reasons we see here.

 

[Ares96]

The obvious counterargument to that is that, while people in Brecon and Radnor might abandon them, all the places where they get 5-10% and get nowhere under FPTP probably add up to enough raw votes to outweigh that. Tactical voting does go both ways.

 

[prime-minister]

The obvious counterargument to that is that, while people in Brecon and Radnor might abandon them, all the places where they get 5-10% and get nowhere under FPTP probably add up to enough raw votes to outweigh that. Tactical voting does go both ways.

It kinda depends what the threshold in the system is like and how rigid a shallow voteshare they can get. Since 2010 especially, they've generally been outpolled as an all-purpose protest vote; back at the time the Welsh Assembly elections I've been mapping happened, what you say was probably true, but nowadays I'm not so sure.

 

[Ares96]

It kinda depends what the threshold in the system is like and how rigid a shallow voteshare they can get. Since 2010 especially, they've generally been outpolled as an all-purpose protest vote; back at the time the Welsh Assembly elections I've been mapping happened, what you say was probably true, but nowadays I'm not so sure.

It is a bit of a shame we don’t really have any examples of a direct transition from FPTP to AMS for the same body - the closest thing I can think of is the European Parliament elections, and the Lib Dems did lose voteshare for that in 1999, but 1994 was also a historically good election for them, so it’s really hard to know what the causality is there. They also seem to have taken minor losses when the Scottish local elections went over to STV, and in that case we have a Scottish Parliament election held on the same day where the system did not change and they basically held firm, so maybe there’s something to it. But it is a pretty minor drop, just under two percentage points.

 

[Alex Richards]

That's the great irony of the Lib Dems really- local ground game and tactical voting appeal are their big strengths, and yet since they know that strategy leaves them as a lot of voters' second choice and makes winning power impractical, a lot of them believe that means PR would serve them better overall despite the likelihood it would actually probably weaken their voter support for the reasons we see here.

The obvious counterargument to that is that, while people in Brecon and Radnor might abandon them, all the places where they get 5-10% and get nowhere under FPTP probably add up to enough raw votes to outweigh that. Tactical voting does go both ways.

It is worth noting that even in 2024 we were slightly down on the number of seats we'd get in Parliament if going by strict PR. So generally there's an acceptance that some tactical voters would be lost but we'd pick up some voters elsewhere where its a straight Lab/Con fight at the moment.

STV, especially on the council level, also happens to be a more proportional system that rewards being a strong local campaigner and promoter- albeit generally without the coat tails effect of bloc vote. Which is probably why that's a general preference. Plus being used in Scotland and Norn giving some familiarity if course.

 

[Thande]

The obvious counterargument to that is that, while people in Brecon and Radnor might abandon them, all the places where they get 5-10% and get nowhere under FPTP probably add up to enough raw votes to outweigh that. Tactical voting does go both ways.

That was definitely true pre-coalition but it's a lot less true than it used to be. That may change again, of course.

 

[prime-minister]

I'm still working on mapping and doing a writeup for Hong Kong in 1995, but in the meantime, have the next Welsh Assembly election.

Once again, I don't think Blaenau Gwent People's Voice had a Welsh name and it doesn't have a Welsh Wikipedia page, so I had to improvise (read: plug it into Google Translate). They also used green rather than independent grey, but that was a bugger to distinguish from Plaid, so I'm not doing that.

 

[Thande]

I'm still working on mapping and doing a writeup for Hong Kong in 1995, but in the meantime, have the next Welsh Assembly election.
View attachment 94708
Once again, I don't think Blaenau Gwent People's Voice had a Welsh name and it doesn't have a Welsh Wikipedia page, so I had to improvise (read: plug it into Google Translate). They also used green rather than independent grey, but that was a bugger to distinguish from Plaid, so I'm not doing that.

I forgot BGPV also stood for the Welsh Assembly. Always interesting when you see a party like that with AMS.

 

[Ares96]

I kind of approve of the change to "Senedd" now that I realise how much the Welsh word for "assembly" looks like the Swedish word for "fucked".

 

[prime-minister]

I forgot BGPV also stood for the Welsh Assembly. Always interesting when you see a party like that with AMS.

It's also interesting how some parties treat the constituencies like FPTP while others try and use the lists to their advantage too. You can see on the 2003 map how the John Marek Independent Party did the former and almost broke through on the list vote level, while BGPV didn't even bother to stand for it.

I kind of approve of the change to "Senedd" now that I realise how much the Welsh word for "assembly" looks like the Swedish word for "fucked".

Honestly that makes me want them to change it back. There's a certain irony to how Wales' biggest neighbour speaks a Germanic language and yet most Welsh words appear to only resemble Germanic word roots in unrelated and amusing ways.

 

[prime-minister]

I did the 1981 GLC election on the Other Place ages ago, so I suddenly remembered had the basemap on hand and got the compulsion to make 1973. This was Labour's biggest landslide in the GLC's history, and still the largest majority they've won in any devolved election in London since 1958. There are a lot of results that stand out as odd to modern eyes- Streatham just about staying Tory (which of course went Labour due to demographic changes that were still taking place in this period), Labour winning Carshalton and almost winning Chislehurst (which I'm not sure the reasons behind all told), and oddest of all, that's not Labour just ahead of the Tories in Enfield North, that's a Liberal they're just ahead of (no clue what that's about either).

Also noteworthy is that this was the last election in London where aldermen were elected. Their numbers had already been reduced from the 21 elected to the LCC by its end to 16 when the GLC was formed and then 15 for this election only. The seven elected in this election and the eight elected in 1970 both served until 1977, per the London Councillors Order 1976 that also extended the council's terms from three years to four.

 

[Thande]

Very nice work. For these elections the GLC used the same boundaries as Parliament, so it might be interesting to contrast them with the following 1974 Parliamentary results (both of them) on the same basemap.

 

[prime-minister]

Very nice work. For these elections the GLC used the same boundaries as Parliament, so it might be interesting to contrast them with the following 1974 Parliamentary results (both of them) on the same basemap.

Thank you! And yes, that's an idea. It might be worth doing the same for the Welsh Assembly too considering that used the same boundaries for 1997-2010 and 2010-24, and obviously Plaid tends to be quite a bit weaker in Westminster elections than Senedd ones.

 

[Thande]

Thank you! And yes, that's an idea. It might be worth doing the same for the Welsh Assembly too considering that used the same boundaries for 1997-2010 and 2010-24, and obviously Plaid tends to be quite a bit weaker in Westminster elections than Senedd ones.

Sounds good, I did the same a while back for Scotland but I could do with updating those.

 

[prime-minister]

Putting the two 1974 elections side by side, you can see not a lot changed- a grand total of one seat, Ilford North, voted differently between the two, though Labour were also very close to gaining Brentford & Isleworth, Croydon Central, Hornsey and Upminster in the October election. I feel like Labour winning a comfortable majority in that election is an underrated PoD, considering it only takes about 0.1-0.2% of the vote changing between the two main parties to change a lot of results IIRC, and it'd probably give Callaghan enough turkeys who wouldn't vote for Christmas to hold on until the very end of the term.

The swings from the GLC election are also noticeably uneven, as some seats are much more willing to vote Labour on that level (Carshalton and the Croydon seats) while a handful of others actually swing towards them (Enfield North and Upminster). Some seats also go from marginal in Parliament to safe in the GLC (Fulham and Mitcham & Morden) and others stay about as close in both (the Ilford seats and Woolwich West).

 

[prime-minister]

I got curious enough about that idea to look up how many votes you'd need to flip to give Labour 10 more seats in October 1974 to counteract the 3 MPs who didn't vote No, their 5 by-election losses and Reg Prentice defecting to the Tories, which would functionally guarantee them holding on in the vote of no confidence. I overestimated saying you'd need to change 0.1-0.2% of the votes to give Labour a big enough majority to last the whole term- apparently the total is 2,725 votes:

• 34 votes in Plymouth Drake
• 121 votes in Beeston
• 141 votes in Northampton South
• 232 votes in Brentford & Isleworth
• 164 votes in Croydon Central
• 302 votes in Bosworth
• 365 votes in Aberdeen South
• 429 votes in East Dunbartonshire
• 468 votes in Reading North
• 469 votes in Newcastle upon Tyne North

That's apparently 0.009% of the total votes cast. 0.1% of the votes is 29k, and that could probably have given Labour a majority not far off Blair in 2005.

 

[Thande]

View attachment 94951Putting the two 1974 elections side by side, you can see not a lot changed- a grand total of one seat, Ilford North, voted differently between the two, though Labour were also very close to gaining Brentford & Isleworth, Croydon Central, Hornsey and Upminster in the October election. I feel like Labour winning a comfortable majority in that election is an underrated PoD, considering it only takes about 0.1-0.2% of the vote changing between the two main parties to change a lot of results IIRC, and it'd probably give Callaghan enough turkeys who wouldn't vote for Christmas to hold on until the very end of the term.

The swings from the GLC election are also noticeably uneven, as some seats are much more willing to vote Labour on that level (Carshalton and the Croydon seats) while a handful of others actually swing towards them (Enfield North and Upminster). Some seats also go from marginal in Parliament to safe in the GLC (Fulham and Mitcham & Morden) and others stay about as close in both (the Ilford seats and Woolwich West).

Excellent work. I'm sporadically working on more recent London election maps myself, and one of the things I find most fascinating is when there are significant differences (and when there aren't) between different types of elections. I'm mostly working on 2021 at the moment and it is fascinating how much Bailey ran ahead of the Tories (or Khan ran behind Labour) when comparing the mayoral to the London Assembly election held simultaneously.

Also interesting that Croydon Central was less Conservative than the two northern Croydon constituencies at this point, I remember that demographic change is very visible over time back when I did a map series for @Meadow 's newspaper (checks notes) ELEVEN YEARS AGO.