Monday 31 December 2012

3. Come on, let's get to the good stuff.


Let's start with the performance of the LibDems in Sunderland local elections in the data period, 2004-2012. This shows the average percentage vote in all Sunderland wards for the 7 elections. Perhaps you can tell which ward was consistent in electing LibDem councillors for a number of years.
   

Unfortunately, in the 2012 elections, the last elected member of our party lost his seat. However, there are a lot of LibDem voters out there - if you work out the average over this period, with its admitted highs and lows, it works out at about 12.7%.
Let's break it down into the average vote per ward for our time period.



As you can see, the average % vote over the whole borough was fluctuating between 13% to 18% when LibDem candidates ran in a ward. Contrary to expectations, 2010 was a fairly normal % of votes, very similar to 2004 and 2006. There was a drop to around 7% after the Coalition came to power. The price of government!

Now here's where it gets interesting - if you look at the official data in 2004 for example, you might think that the ward average was 8% because this is the average vote % taken from the number of votes counted across the borough. However, this is totally wrong - it's not the ward average -  because the LibDems didn't put up candidates in all wards, which changes the way the ward average is calculated.

Actually, if you calculate, taking this into account, a much healthier vote 18.2% is given. The same statistical error as appeared in the quoted national PCC election results. How many times... You can't take an average vote from somewhere where no voting occurred! It's not the same as zero votes, which is when no-one chooses to vote for a party.


Year
2004
2006
2007
2008
2010
2011
2012
No of wards contested
11
22
15
22
23
19
21




So how many people in Sunderland are LibDem voters? Let's leave aside the issue of swing voters, the undecided and the like and just look at pure numbers. I took the average of LibDem votes for 2004-2012 in each ward to try and get a representative percentage, though it's not weighted for % turnout which would obviously skew the data. (Also my days of using SPSS programs are but a distant memory). This is just a rough average count of bodies actually seen in the polling booths rather than a hypothetical figure like that. Let's call this the average active voting population then.



 
And of course, you'll want to know the total, which is 11,393. Remember, that's an average of actual votes/ward. In 2010 the actual overall vote for the borough, for the party, numbered 20,247, and in 2012 that had become 3,818. I don't find this depressing, because there are still many thousands of us left in Sunderland, even if the % has dropped. Plus, that's a lot of swing voters who can be won back.

There were in fact wards where the LibDem percentage vote was in double figures, and in one ward it reached 38%. You can probably guess which from the spike on the graph. Yes, for whatever reason, that ward bucks the trend. I like to think that it's the effort put into the campaign, so you have to ask yourselves, what could we achieve if we put a similar effort into wards like this at the next local elections. Not necessarily winning, but building up the support, and encouraging the party's supporters who want electoral representation for their views. So the next question is, how can the data help target efforts?

My next post will be on ways of statistically measuring the effectiveness of a candidate, with real life Sunderland examples.

Sunday 30 December 2012

2. Yes but how big is the support for the Right (or left) in Sunderland?

Let's look at the opposition. I particularly chose the right to study, because of the considerable support in the local area for the extreme right. These smaller parties drain support for the LibDems.

 Voting had an average of 25% for the Conservatives over the period 2004-2012, BNP 9.3% and UKIP 11.9 %

Here are the local election results for every ward in Sunderland for 2004. This was the year that Boundary changes took effect, so large numbers of candidates were put forward, and more than one councillor was elected per ward. Wikipedia says Labour put forward 75 candidates, Conservatives 54 LibDem 18 (+ one die hard original Liberal Party candidate) and BNP 25.

Results: 12 Conservative, 61 Labour and 2 LibDem councillors were elected.

 Let’s take a closer look. The biggest Conservative vote in the city is in Fulwell at 67%, followed by St. Michael’s at 61%, St. Peter’s at 51% and St. Chad’s at 43%. You might expect these wards to have right wing support for BNP but in fact Fulwell had the smallest BNP vote of all. Fulwell is quite the most expensive part of Sunderland to buy property (a good indicator of wealth) so the BNP apparently has fewer upmarket supporters. Apparently the finance to field so many candidates for the BNP was because the party chose Sunderland as one of only a handful of places they put up candidates that year.


Ward
Conservative
BNP
1
Barnes
39.91
3.8
2
Castle
15.2
10.92
3
Copt Hill
17.4
7.62
4
Doxford
34.83
6.47
5
Fulwell
67.66
3.7
6
Hendon
25.34
7.17
7
Hetton
9.96
6.51
8
Houghton
10.93
7.23
9
Millfield
25.77
5.53
10
Pallion
25.79
10.72
11
Redhill
14.3
10.89
12
Ryhope
23.82
9.9
13
St. Anne's
20.65
9.19
14
St. Chad's
43.75
4.94
15
St.Michael's
61.9
3.12
16
St. Peter's
51.54
6.73
17
Sandhill
16
9.48
18
Shiney Row
15.13
5.14
19
Silksworth
24.28
8.43
20
Southwick
22.22
10.6
21
Washington Central
25.41
4.6
22
Washington East
30.22
4.29
23
Washington North
8.61
6.3
24
Washinton South
23.93
6.22
25
Washington West
10.2
5.39


The biggest BNP support was in Castle, Pallion, Redhill, Ryhope, Sandhill and St. Anne’s, some of the most deprived areas in the city, with (at the time) large council estates, many of which have since been pulled down/regenerated. BNP support therefore seems to be highest, largely among the poor and disaffected. Both the Conservatives and the BNP  are seen as right wing, but they apparently appeal to very different sets of voters. But how different?

Political Compass - www.politicalcompass.org/ukparties2010    has a useful diagram to place them on the political spectrum (although there is some debate about whether these positions are fixed throughout the lifetime of a party, the SDLP being considerably to the left of the LibDems). You can, by the way test yourself on this site. 


Anyway, the point is that both the BNP and Conservatives are traditionally seen as the right wing choice, both in terms of authoritarianism, and/or economic control. (Interestingly, on several of these charts that I viewed, New Labour was regarded as more right wing than the LibDems!)

The most right wing ward of all was once again Fulwell, followed by St. Michael’s, St. Peter’s, St. Chad’s and Barnes. The 2004 all ward average was 33% of support for parties to the right, counting both types of right of centre support. Let's suppose that higher scores than this average mean a stronger level of support than normal. Therefore
this made 10 /25 wards to be right inclined, with scores above this, and consequently, 15/25 wards favoured left/centre political groups, which I take to be Labour and the LibDems. Fertile ground for these parties, one might say, and places where policies favouring social issues will be most appropriate. And will the large scale city housing regeneration programme change voting patterns in deprived areas towards Labour?

Looking at it a slightly different way, we can look at support for Labour (including independents) and LibDem as Centre-Left and Conservative, UKIP and BNP as Right. Average out the votes per ward for local elections between 2004 and 2012 and this is the graph produced. A measure of how Left-Right a ward is. There's a lot of red on those graphs! As you might expect, the wards closest to 50:50 provide the most fertile ground for campaigning.

The next post will be on the LibDem vote in Sunderland.

1. The Voting patterns in Sunderland - an introduction

I’ve been looking at the local election statistics on wikipedia for my area - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunderland_local_elections. I know I haven’t got all of the expensive software that political parties have, but still, a few interesting things can be found out. I’m not so statistically adept that I can generate biases and weightings etc, but let’s have some fun. Data is available on Wikipedia and the Sunderland Council website.

Sunderland has 25 wards, and has a Labour led council, with some Tories, though the LibDems recently lost their last seat on the council. More on that later.

First of all, the data in percentages of the vote:-


Conservatives
Labour
LibDem
BNP
UKIP
Respect
Green
2004
28.9
55.4
8
6.6



2006
28.4
40.5
15.7
14.6



2007
28.1
43.3
8.7
10.6
0.1
0.3

2008
32
39.6
11.6
10.2
0.1


2010
25.2
49
18.3
3.3


0.3
2011
25.7
60.3
5.1

2

2.4
2012
20.4
62.1
5.5
0.001
4.9

4.7



Generally a battle between Labour and the Conservatives. You can see that Labour’s vote was falling during the Blair regime and rallied slightly for Gordon Brown. However it has greatly improved over the past 2 years. As you might expect from a party which has been in charge of the council forever, they can get quite complacent. I haven’t ever seen my local councillor, although since the Conservative operation improved, there is an occasional newsletter. There is a healthy exchange of views between opposing supporters in the Sunderland Echo.

The Conservatives haven’t seen such a big variation in their support; 28% in 2004, a brief increase in 2008 just after David Cameron became leader to 32%, to a 2012 level of 20%. Not much of a variation due to austerity, but then, they’re very much more active locally than the other parties, and are seen to be taking an interest in local issues. A very slick operation, with glossy newsletters, web chats etc. Their share of the vote dropped slightly in 2012.

My own party, the LibDems generally showed a rise in support until 2011 when the vote dropped considerably. However the apparent drop in 2008 was due to fielding fewer candidates (15/25 wards) rather than anything else.

As you can see, the BNP ran candidates in all 25 Sunderland wards for several years, did best in 2006 but have since tailed off both in the number of candidates (12 in 2010, none after that) and their vote share. They still appear in the area though. Getting stuck under a low bridge shows the quality of their representation. See link.

Other parties such as UKIP, Respect and the Greens occasionally field a candidate or two, but so far their share of the vote has been negligible, below 5%. However, in 2012, their share of the vote, particularly the Greens, was responsible for the loss of the Millfield ward, as the vote was so close. Ironic that the Greens should be responsible for the election of a less green candidate than if they hadn't run.

My next post will be on Left/right support in Sunderland