I have now posted a guide to a second English region. The South East of England is a region heavily dominated by Conservatives, even at their low-points. The party holds over two-thirds of seats, and is in with a chance of winning back most Labour seats in the region in 2010.
A fantastic online innovation in the UK general election campaign is The Straight Choice website. This website allows voters to upload reasonably high quality photos of election leaflets to the website, tag them for the party who produced the leaflet, where it was sent, when it arrived, what issues are mentioned and what other parties are attacked. The website has now posted over 1400 leaflets, with the number rising quickly now that the election campaign is heating up. It is a treasure trove of election materials for any psephologist interested in the UK election campaign. When browsing through the leaflets, you notice how many times a leaflet is focused on the “we can win here” message. While briefly skimming through the website I found a bunch of leaflets from various parties using bar graphs and other mechanisms to argue that a vote for a particular party is not a wasted vote (or in some cases argue that a vote for another party will be counterproductive), including:
My favourite arguments for tactical voting, however, have to come from Brighton Pavilion, where Green Party leader Caroline Lucas and a Conservative candidate are both strong challengers to the Labour incumbent. The Labour leaflet shows the results of the 2005 election. While the Green Party have produced a leaflet showing the Greens coming first in Brighton at the European elections, they also have a remarkable leaflet arguing that left-wing voters should vote Green because the bookies say the Greens will win, and that voters shouldn’t “back a loser”.
The last word, however, has to go to the Official Monster Raving Loony Party candidate in Croydon Central:
“We should have a diverse, tolerant, pluralistic and democratic society in which there is mutual respect for a wide range of different views, cultures and lifestyles. Anybody who dares to suggest otherwise should be ruthlessly exterminated.”
I have begun a guide to the UK election today by posting a guide to the race in London. Over the next few weeks I plan to post guides to the race in the nine regions of England as well as in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and you can read the first instalment here. Below I have posted on of the maps posted as part of the guide, showing marginal seats in London highlighted.
Constituencies in London. Seats with margins of less than 10% are highlighted.
Charlton is a safe Labor seat in the lower Hunter region of New South Wales. It covers suburbs to the west of Lake Macquarie, including the towns of Morisset and Toronto, as well as suburbs north of Lake Macquarie on the fringe of Newcastle including Wallsend and Cardiff.
The seat has been held by former ACTU secretary Greg Combet since the 2007 election. Combet is now a junior minister in the Rudd government, having risen rapidly through the ministerial ranks since his election.
Reports in the British media today are suggesting that British Prime Minister Gordon Brown will visit the Queen today to dissolve the Parliament and trigger a UK general election for Thursday, 6 May.
After a long period of Conservative dominance in the polls, the Labour Party has been clawing back ground over the last few weeks and months, bringing the Conservative lead in most polls below 10 points, raising the prospect of a hung parliament, even possibly with Labour as the largest party, due to the pro-Labour bias in the electoral system. The Conservative Party has pushed its lead back up to around 10% in polls since about last Wednesday, but that trend isn’t universal.
Today’s Guardian ICM poll is reporting a Conservative lead of only 4%, which is one of the closest polls seen this year, but not far off what recent polls have been indicated. Such a poll would raise the prospect of Labour remaining the largest party, despite polling less than the Conservatives.
David Cameron’s Conservatives remain the clear frontrunner in this election, but it is much less clear now than a few months ago. Labour has successfully pulled the Conservative lead back from the stratospheric figures we saw in 2009, such that the prospects of a hung parliament have become very strong.
I’m planning to post a number of times about the UK election over the next month, including profiles of the election in each region. I am currently rushing to finish my map of the 1997 UK electoral boundaries. I have finished the 1997 maps of Northern Ireland and Wales and have completed most of England, barring Lancashire, Cumbria and the North East, and I hope to have it finished this week, followed closely by the Scottish boundaries (which were also used for the first three Scottish Parliament elections). You can download these works-in-progress now. Of course, you can also download the maps for the new boundaries being used in 2010 for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland:
Boundaries for the 2010 UK general election. Click to enlarge.
Adelaide covers the central suburbs of Adelaide in South Australia. It has been held since 2004 by Minister for Youth and Sport, Kate Ellis.
She holds it by a sizeable 8% margin, although the seat has a long history of switching between the major parties, and was held by the Liberal Party from 1993 to 2004.
Shortland is a safe Labor seat lying between the Central Coast and Newcastle, covering the land between Lake Macquarie and the Pacific Ocean. The seat has been a safe Labor seat since its creation in 1949. It has been held by Jill Hall since 1998, and she should be safely re-elected in 2010. Major suburbs include Charlestown, Swansea, Belmont and Budgewoi.
New England is a large electorate covering the New England region of northern NSW. The seat covers the NSW towns of Tamworth, Armidale, Gunnedah, Glen Innes and a number of others, stretching from the Queensland border to the northern edge of the Hunter. The seat has a long tradition of being held by the Country/National Party, but has been held since 2001 by independent Tony Windsor.
Windsor was previously the state MP for Tamworth from 1991 to 2001, and the New England region has become an independent stronghold, with both state seats held by independents. Windsor holds New England with a massive majority, polling 74% of the two-party preferred vote and almost 62% of the primary vote in 2007.
