Psephology 6 - Using Voter Turnout data

The snow is deep on the ground and it's way below zero, or so it seems, so I'm staying in to play around with some data. It would be interesting to do the statistics to see if deprived wards also have a poorer voter turnout - voter apathy is also a factor in such areas (according to Lewis, 2008, Open University). So I did exactly that. I worked out the average voter turnout percentage for each ward, to see which have persistent high or low turnouts. I also added the average LibDem % vote for each ward to the graph.

Yes, they're both percentages, but you can't assume that virtually the whole of Millfield turned out to vote LibDem. We're just looking at general trends here, and slight correlations; ecological fallacy, I think they call it if you push data too far. The point of the graph is to show trends:-  good vote but low turnout - we must be doing something right. Or high turnout and low vote. Oops, get leafleting.

Some wards have a very high turnout, Fulwell and St Chad's for example, which just happen to be the highest Conservative voting wards in the city. Can one infer from that that Conservatives are more conscientious? Wards like St. Anne's, Hendon and Southwick on the other hand, have very low turnouts in comparison and these are the poorest part of the city. I know it's stereotyping but I can't help but think of voter apathy and poverty being linked. On the other hand, in line with the theories,  it may not be pushing it too far to suggest voter turnout as a measure of how deprived an area is. See:-

http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/63835/Social-exclusion-and-political-engagement.pdf

The two sets of data do not always match. Millfield has both high turnouts and higher LibDem voting. However, St. Chad's and Copt Hill have a lower than expected LibDem vote by this criteria; are the LibDems staying home in these areas? St Chad's, my ward, is a swing ward, heavily contested between Labour and the Conservatives. Interestingly, Hendon seems to buck the trend, having a lower turnout, but with a higher than expected LibDem vote. Is there something about the LibDem message that appeals to lower income voters. I would say the tax threshold, but this data is from the last 8 years.

That data was from percentage turnout, but what about the actual numbers. Can they be useful? Let's look at the average numerical turnout by ward.

Ward	Average Turnout	Ward	Average Turnout
Barnes	4024	Shiney Row	3695
Castle	2859	Silksworth	3416
Copt Hill	3494	Southwick	2904
Doxford	3270	St Anne's	2692
Fulwell	3955	St Chad's	3628
Hendon	2760	St Michael's	3855
Hetton	2711	St Peter's	3630
Houghton	3463	Washington Central	3628
Millfield	2595	Washington East	3602
Pallion	2684	Washington North	3066
Redhill	2816	Washington South	3373
Ryhope	3208	Washington West	3457
Sandhill	3033

Comparing the actual and percentage data, in theory, it should closely match, but actually, there is a small variation in the graphs. Unfortunately, my graph doesn't translate from excel very well. Here's a close up though.

I wondered first whether it was an artefact of the scale I was using, but the trends of the lines should be broadly similar. It's just possible that I'm seeing an artefact of the difference in size of the wards. So in Redhill, it's easier to elect a candidate, because 33% is 1400 people, whilst in Pallion, 33% is roughly 1750 people. Data like this makes my brain whirr like a pachinko machine!

So off I went to calculate exactly how many people in each ward equal one percent of the vote?

Ward	Number of people equalling 1%	Ward	Number of people equalling 1%
Barnes	90	Shiney Row	102
Castle	87	Silksworth	85
Copt Hill	91	Southwick	84
Doxford	79	St Anne's	87
Fulwell	92	St Chad's	80
Hendon	90	St Michael's	92
Hetton	90	St Peter's	87
Houghton	91	Washington Central	90
Millfield	81	Washington East	88
Pallion	76	Washington North	89
Redhill	86	Washington South	82
Ryhope	82	Washington West	91
Sandhill	86

I used the 2012 election turnout figures to calculate this. Some  variation - 76 people equal a voting percent in Pallion, compared to 92 people in St Michael's. Not huge differences, except in Shiney Row where one percent is 102 voters!

Out of interest, there are some theories as to the percentage of the electorate that are politically active - from the 2009 Audit of Political Engagaement 6 at

http://hansardsociety.org.uk/blogs/parliament_and_government/archive/2009/04/01/audit-of-political-engagement-6.aspx

This finds that in 2009, in the UK population:-

12% were very interested in politics

40% were fairly interested in politics

30% were not very interested in politics

17% were totally uninterested in politics

I suppose only the first two groups vote. Also in this survey, 5% claim to know a great deal about the subject!

Next time - National election results for Sunderland.