By the numbers
Thursday, May 19, 2005

The Parliamentary research paper on the 2005 General Election (PDF, 2MB) has been released and jolly interesting reading it makes too. It's full of priddy pictures as well.

It doesn't pull its punches either. He's a few choice nuggets for all those fans of democracy out there:

Labour’s vote share across the United Kingdom was 35.2%, down 5.5% points compared with 2001. This is the lowest ever share of the vote won by a winning party at a UK General Election. Labour’s 9.5 million votes is equivalent to 21.6% of the electorate, again a record low for a winning party.

...

The Conservatives polled almost 57,000 more votes than Labour across England.

...

Labour’s share is lower than in 1979, an election they lost.

...

Labour’s 9.6 million votes was lower than in any post-War election except 1983,
when it polled 8.5 million.

...

Turnout was, on average, 7.5% points higher in seats won by the Conservatives than in seats won by Labour.

The breakdown of voting patterns by social class was interesting with more AB voters voting Tory than New Labour and more DE voters voting New Labour than Tory. More AB voters voted Lib Dem than did their DE conterparts.

It was an election for records in more ways than one:

Vote for Yourself Rainbow Dream Ticket candidate Catherine Taylor-Dawson won just one vote in Cardiff North, beating the previous General Election low of 13 for B.C. Wedmore, an independent, in Finchley in 1983. It also beat the by-election record of five votes, held jointly by W.G. Boaks (Independent, Glasgow Hillhead, 1982) and K.S. Trivedi (Independent, Kensington, 1988). Ms Taylor-Dawson fared better in the three other seats she contested, winning 37 votes in Cardiff Central, 79 in Cardiff South, and 167 in Cardiff West. Reportedly, she did not vote for herself.

It was also a good election for cronyism with a number of former special advisers being parachuted in:

Three former advisors to Gordon Brown were newly-elected for Labour: Ed Balls
(Normanton), Ed Milliband (Doncaster North) and Ian Austin (Dudley North). They are
joined by Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton SE), who was previously an advisor at 10 Downing Street, and Kitty Ussher (Burnley) a former aide to Patricia Hewitt at the
Department of Trade and Industry.

Greg Clark was elected for the Conservatives in Tunbridge Wells. He was a former
special advisor to Ian Lang as Secretary of State for Trade and Industry and, more
recently, Director of Policy for the Conservative Party. He is joined by Mike Penning (Hemel Hempstead), who worked for Sir Teddy Taylor and William Hague and, until recently, was Iain Duncan Smith's Deputy Head of Media.

Susan Kramer, who stood for London Mayor in 2000, retained Richmond Park for the
Liberal Democrats. Jeremy Browne, a former aide to Paddy Ashdown, took Taunton for
the Liberal Democrats.

One thing the research paper doesn't give us, unlike the 2001 version, is a breakdown of seats by marginality. New Labour was returned in a bunch of seats on knife-edge majorities and it'd be interesting to see how close to being turfed out they might come in 2009.

Anyway, bigger brains than me will have fun taking the report to pieces in more detail. A Chris Lightfoot or a Philip Hunt will make these numbers dance.


2 Comments:

On May 19, 2005 9:21 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Would that be the same Chris Lightfoot whose measure of how left-wing you are is compared with how close your views correspond to those held by Polly Toynbee? Worry not, young man, you have a bigger brain than Chris Lightfoot.  


On May 19, 2005 10:53 PM, Blogger Justin said...

Anonymous, if you're going to leave comments of this ilk I'd appreciate it if you'd have the good grace to not post anonymously. If you stand by your comments please put your name to them.

Thanks.  


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