Thursday 2 May 2013

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
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...

3 comments:

  1. Prediction:

    Conservatives - 9%
    Lib Dems 3%
    Independent/others 5%
    UKIP - 30%
    Labour -51%
    BNP - 2%

    ReplyDelete
  2. Lib Dem vote could be as low as 2% - completely squeezed out in South Shields.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Given reports coming in - and changing odds by bookies - UKIP may be as high as 35% of the vote, tories 6/7%, Labour 50%...

    ReplyDelete