Psephology of South Shields 2

As promised, here are the general election results for South Shields since 1983, to give a flavour of how strong a Labour Seat it is. I would have blogged earlier, but not in the greatest of health this week. (The things I could blog about the Health Service!)

Year	LibDem	Labour	Conservative	UKIP
1983	22.7	46.5	30.9
1987	15.5	57.9	25.7
1992	12.8	59.8	27.4
1997	4	71.4	14.6
2001	16.8	63.2	16.9	2.3
2005	19.7	60.5	17.2
2010	14.2	52	21.6

 

As you can see, Labour has won the seat every time, with a particularly good result in the year Tony Blair was voted in, 1997. Interestingly though, after that, satisfaction with the Labour MP seems to have declined by around 20%, quite a big drop, though how much is down to Bliar and how much to Mr Miliband is a debateable point. I point out, not entirely neutrally, that his nickname according to the South Shields bloggers, is Mr Invisible.

1. How does this compare to the local election results?

A reminder of how the parties did in the local elections in 2010 and 2012. A comparison of the results shows that the relative places of the parties are pretty much the same, except for the independent figure, which represents an amalgam of several candidates rather than just one - more candidates stood locally, in the strong South Tyneside electoral tradition. The pollster Nate Silver considers that local election results are more representative of peoples' innermost convictions, so if the 2012 results are any guide, this should be an interesting election. Certainly, the big parties do very slightly better in general elections, probably because of the popularity of the independents.

Party %	2010		2012
	Local	Gen Election	Local
Labour	48.7	52	59.4
Conservative	14.4	21.6	12.2
Lib Dem	7.2	14.2	0
BNP	8.5	6.5	4.9
Green	1.4	2.1	0.5
Independent	15.6	3.6	17.6

2. So what will happen this time round?

Oh I love the fun questions. Well in 2012 Labour had 59.4%, Conservatives 12.2 and LibDems didn't field candidates (but had 2.4% in 2011). These are the most recent results for the area, but UKIP has only ever fielded a candidate once in a national election in this area - they got 2.3% in 2001.

Here are the national predictions from the big polling companies:-

Poll 01/05/2013	UKIP	Con	Lab	LD	Other
Survation	24	29.5	20	16.5	4.4
Comres	22	31	24	12
YouGov	14	30	39	11
Average	20.0	30.2	27.7	13.2	4.4

A while ago, after Eastleigh, I played around with the voting % and hypothesised how well UKIP would do in the Northeast:-  http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=900837753505324236#editor/target=post;postID=1362365473363841570;onPublishedMenu=allposts;onClosedMenu=allposts;postNum=3;src=postname

This is the first chance I get to test my predictions (bearing in mind this was back in March, and UKIPs support may even be higher now. This is the fun bit of politics.

My slightly adjusted predictions for the South Shields by-election;-

PREDICTION 12/3/2013	Conservative	Labour	LibDem	Independent	UKIP	Green	BNP
South Shields	12%	47%	7.8%	3.6%	17.8%	5.3%	6.5%

Dream result: Liberal Democrat of course, but if a guy dressed as a monkey won, I can't help thinking Mr Monkey would be an improvement on Mr Miliband...