From the Vaults

I've popped to the party offices in Clapham, and run across our archivist here. So, I put him to work, and here are our votes from the 1973 GLC election:

Islington North	Buick	284
Hackney North & Stoke Newington	Carter	250
Hampstead	Cox	191
Hornsey	Porter	144
Streatham	Simpkins	120
Vauxhall	Sansum	121
Lambeth Central	Baldwin	115
Tottenham	A. Young	109
Holborn & St. Pancras	Davies	99
Norwood	H. Young	95
St. Marylebone	Weidberg	84

If we take those seats in our 2012 area, Norwood, Streatham, Lambeth Central and Vauxhall, we have 451. The Old GLC constituencies were much smaller and more numerous, but judging by their names they seem to have corresponded with the rough size of a Parliamentary constituency, and seem to have had electoral lists totalling about 45,000 voters. So that was 451 out of about 185,000 potential voters.

As the wikipedia article, linked to above, states, 1973 was a changed electoral system. Here are our totals for 1970

Camden	Cox	391
Camden	Davies	323
Camden	Grant	299
Ealing	George	735
Ealing	Buchanan	695
Ealing	Rose	392
Ealing	Sawyer	293
Haringey	Carter	443
Haringey	Buick	374
Haringey	Waite	212
Lambeth	Garnham	620
Lambeth	Phillips	536
Lambeth	Simkins	295

As can be seen, these were multi-member constituencies, so we could be picking up stray votes from other parties. We can take our "real" vote as being our top vote in each, which to summarise were:

Camden	Cox	391
Ealing	George	735
Haringey	Carter	443
Lambeth	Garnham	620

We're mostly conerned with Lambeth. Now, note, this is across the whole borough (hence the much higher votes than 1973). Lambeth is, obviously, what is now our main stomping ground of Lambeth and Southwark. 620 votes in 1970 can be roughly coubled (assuming an equivilent vote available in Southwark) to give us 1,200 - about our result in 2008, but about half of our vote this time. The above results were about 0.6% of the vote. But, let's look at 1967.

Camden	Buchanan	907
Camden	Grant	419
Camden	Giles	411
Ealing	Cox	1250
Ealing	George	1107
Ealing	Rose	611
Ealing	Wait	441
Haringey	Buick	1277
Haringey	Carter	1191
Haringey	Davies	1067
Lambeth	Garnham	1362
Lambeth	Baldwin	970
Lambeth	Phillips	806

And those headlines again:

Lambeth	Garnham	1362
Haringey	Buick	1277
Ealing	Cox	1250
Camden	Buchanan	907

Now, intriguingly, we were up against Communist Party opposition that year, and by and large they ouit polled us. Except in Lambeth, where Garnham came above one of the communist candidates. 1967 was not a year of crisis (in fact, it was the year before the crisis, while the going was still relatively good). It was a year of voting against the incumbant Labour government (so the Tories got in) and that may explain our quite high vote in Haringey (1.8%), and our then record in Lambeth (1.3%). To continue my unscientific procedure, if we double the Lambeth vote, we get 2724, just behind our score this time. Last time led to Tory government and to a surge back to Labour, this time we achieved our vote during a surge to Labour, which suggests there may be space for more growth. but in any case, it looks like 2012 is definitively our best election result ever. The trick now will be to build on that vote.

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.

More analysis

This time Lambeth and Southwark.

In Lambeth we got 1700 (2.1%) and in Southwark 1238 (1.6%).

In three wards in Lambeth (Coldharbour, Larkhall and Brixton Hill) we got over a hundred votes, respectively 111, 102 and 101, or 3.4%, 3.3% and 3.0%. What this means in practical terms (assuming only about a third of electors voted) is that if you are walking town the street in these areas 1 out of every 100 people you pass are likely to have voted Socialist. I think that means that we should have a regular literature stall in Brixton High Road (which these three wards plus Ferndale where we got 2.9% surround). It also suggests that we should consider contesting the proposed new Brixton constituency (which will include all these wards) rather than the proposed Battersea & Vauxhall constituency -- if these and the other proposed boundary changes ever come in and are not dropped in exchange for not reforming the House of Lords.

In 9 of the 21 of the wards our candidate got more votes than the UKIP, or rather "The Fresh Choice for London", candidate. Not really surprising, as their main campaign slogan was "Save the City" and who wants to do that except the likes of the City bankers and lawyers who figured on their list?

In the 8 wards making up the parliamentary constituency of Vauxhall, the vote (not including postal votes) was 593 (or 2.5%). This contrasts with the 143 (or 0,3%) we got there in the 2010 General Election and the 240 (0.6%) in the 2005 General Election. In the 2008 GLA elections the figure was 351 (or 1.6%). An analysis of how we did in all the 10 parliamentary constituencies the GLA constituency covers follows separately.

In Southwark the best ward was Nunhead (which we did happen to leaflet) with 76 (or 2.7%) and we beat UKIP in 2 wards.

The higher vote in Lambeth than Southwark is no doubt to be explained by the fact that we have put a lot of work into Vauxhall, having contested 3 General Elections and 3 Council elections there as well as the last GLA elections and the European Parliament. We have also been leafletting regularly Larkhall and Ferndale wards (chosen because that's where we did best last time). This doesn't explain why we did better in Streatham (the other Lambeth parliamentary constituency) than in any part of Southwark.

Analysis -- Merton & Wandsworth

A little examination of the breakdown by ward (available here). Some breakdowns are very interesting. We got 578 votes in Merton, as opposed to 765 in Wandsworth (averages of 28 and 36, respectively). Postal votes complicate the picture a little, as they aren't grouped by ward, and we got 66 in Merton and 159 in Wandsworth. Our highest vote in Merton was 38 in Merton Park and St. Helier wards. In Wandsworth it was 54 in Latchmere (1.8% of votes cast) -- this appears to be one of the few Labour wards in Wandsworth. Of the Merton wards, St. Helier is Labour, while Merton Park is Independent. Both are down in Morden, so we have votes at the end of the Northern Line.

In some ways these figures confound my expectations, I thought we'd do better in Labour held Merton (which also returns Labour MP's), as compared to squarely Tory Wandsworth. Then again, Battersea Parliamentary constituency used to be Labour, and that's the area we leafletted. Further, Latchmere appears to have been squarely in the area we leafletted, so maybe that sort of thing pays off (it might also account for the higher postal vote).

The main thing it emphasises, that although in aggregate it sounds an impressive number, by ward it is our usual fare at council elections. The trick will be to tap into this latent vote and turn it into something bigger.

Just by way of comparison, TUSC averaged 15 votes per ward (308 in total) in Merton on the list election, and 28 (596) on the list election, which is pretty consistently behind us. The question to ask, is where a lot of our voters as confused as the BBC? If, however, you take our vote and replicate it across all 627 wards in London, it means we would achieve about 18,000 votes, which is close to the TUSC vote anyway.

Update: A more statistically minded comrade has pointed me in the direction of our average percentage. By that measure we did do better in Merton (average 1.1% of the vote) than in Wandsworth (0.9%). It's also been suggested we did well in St. Mary's Park ward (Wandsworth) thanks to the work of a mysterious comrade there. By percentage, then, our best overall result was St. Hellier (Merton), with 1.76%.