Thursday, May 17, 2012

By parliamentary constituency

The two GLA constituencies we contested covered 10 parliamentary constituencies (which would have cost us £5000 in deposits to contest as opposed to the £2000 we paid). Here are the number of votes our candidate obtained in these, excluding postal votes. As we got 220 postal votes in Lambeth (to be divided between 2 1/2 constituencies), 196 in Southwark (ditto), 159 in Wandsworth (3 constituencies) and 66 in Merton (2 constituencies), 641 in all, the full figures will be higher.

Anyway, here are the postal-voteless figures:

Vauxhall (Lab held) 593 (2.5%)
Streatham (Lab) 510 (2.1%)
Dulwich & West Norwood (Lab) 511 (2.0%)
Camberwell $ Peckham (Lab) 508 (1.9%)
Bermondsey & Old Southwark (LD) 400 (1.7%)
Mitcham & Morden (Lab) 293 (1.3%)
Battersea (Con) 232 (1.0%)
Tooting 228 (Lab) (0.9%)
Wimbledon (Con) 219 (0.9%)
Putney (Con) 146 (0.8%)

What these figures show is that we do better in Labour-held constituencies and in fact the better the safer the Labour seat is. When you think of it, this it what is to be expected in view both of the nature of our case and of the language in which we express it. More people in these places will have some degree of class consciousness.

Here is how all the parties did in Vauxhall:

Labour 12878 (53.7%)
Conservative 4763 (19.9%)
Green 2704 (11.3%)
Liberal Democrat 2515 (10.4%)
Socialist 593 (2.5%)
UKIP 538 (2.2%).

This is how they did in the 8 wards that would make up the proposed new constituency of Brixton:

Labour 15398 (58.5%)
Conservative 3894 (14.8%)
Green 3720 (14.1%)
Liberal Democrat 2117 (8.0%)
Socialist 719 (2.7%)
UKIP 486 (1.9%)

As to the 8 wards in the proposed new Battersea & Vauxhall constituency which we have been considering contesting instead of Vauxhall if it disappears, 4 of the wards are in Wandsworth and 4 in Lanbeth making comparisons difficult as there were 7 candidates in the first 4 and only 6 in the second. The Socialist candidates between them polled (not including postal votes) 428 votes (1.7%).

A word of caution: people tend to vote differently in elections which they consider don't matter (and which in fact don't matter) such as those for the GLA and the European Parliament than they do in parliamentary elections. It would be nice if these results could be reproduced in a parliamentary election but it won't necessarily be the case.

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