Worcester
2005 Results:
Labour: 19421 (41.9%)
Conservative: 16277 (35.1%)
Liberal Democrat: 7557 (16.3%)
Other: 3133 (6.8%)
Majority: 3144 (6.8%)
2001 Result
Conservative: 15712 (35.5%)
Labour: 21478 (48.6%)
Liberal Democrat: 5578 (12.6%)
UKIP: 1442 (3.3%)
Majority: 5766 (13%)
1997 Result
Conservative: 18423 (35.7%)
Labour: 25848 (50.1%)
Liberal Democrat: 6462 (12.5%)
Other: 886 (1.7%)
Majority: 7425 (14.4%)
No Boundary Changes:
Profile:
Current MP: Michael Foster(Labour) Born 1963, Birmingham. Educated at Great Wyrley High School, Former accountant for Jaguar and accountancy lecturer. First elected as MP for Worcester in 1997. Former PPS to Margaret Hodge and Peter Hain. Government whip 2006-2008, Undersecretary of state for international development since 2008. In 1997 he was the sponsor for the unsuccessful private members bill to ban hunting with dogs (more information at They work for you)
Candidates: Robin Walker (Conservative) born 1978, son of former cabinet minister Peter Walker. Educated at Oxford University. Communications advisor.
Louis Stephen (Green) Senior manager working for an international engineering company.
2001 Census Demographics
Total 2001 Population: 93353
Male: 48.7%
Female: 51.3%
Under 18: 22.6%
Over 60: 18.8%
Born outside UK: 4.9%
White: 96.5%
Black: 0.3%
Asian: 2%
Mixed: 0.7%
Other: 0.5%
Christian: 76.7%
Muslim: 1.8%
Full time students: 4.3%
Graduates 16-74: 20.4%
No Qualifications 16-74: 27.6%
Owner-Occupied: 73.6%
Social Housing: 15.4% (Council: 11.5%, Housing Ass.: 3.9%)
Privately Rented: 8.4%
Homes without central heating and/or private bathroom: 8.4%
These ones are real possibilities -the rest of that list I rather doubt.
Wakefield 6537 Swing required: 7.95 %
Harrogate and Knaresborough 7811 Swing required: 8.05 %
154. Erewash 6893 Swing required: 8.1 %
155. Norfolk North 8177 Swing required: 8.15 %
Dagenham and Rainham 6581 Swing required: 8.35 %
165. Crewe and Nantwich 7494 Swing required: 8.4 %
Joe
Don’t forget Bassetlaw, northern industrial constituencies will show big swings especially those which are demographically trending Conservative.
I can’t see the Conservatives gaining any of the LibDems seats on that list, Harrogate is probably the only one where they have a reasonable chance I think.
Constitiuencies where Labour could do better than expected ( though not necessarily enough to hang on) include Hastings, Watford, Dumfries and Bradford West.
The regional swings in the most recent YouGov and ComRes polls have been calculated by people on Political Betting. They both show a 13.5% swing in Northern England which would give 39 Conservative gains in the North-West, 6 in the North-East and 26 in Yorkshire.
Some of these supposed gains were incredible – Burnley, Oldhams East and West, Stockport, Bishop Auckland, York Central, Scunthorpe, Bradford East, Huddersfield and Sheffield Hallam. As the Conservatives surely can’t be doing that well in these sorts of constituencies I wonder if they’re actually doing even better in the marginals (marginals being a very broad range in this case).
I hesitated on Bassetlaw – I think it might be a bit too much but you could be correct.
Norfolk North I think will be close.
I prefer Bassetlaw to Erewash.
Norfolk North and Lewes seem rather similar to me. I think the best chance of a Conservative gain in them will be when the present MPs stand down (similar to the present Harrogate situation).
Iain Dale’s disaster has given the Conservatives a lot to do in Norfolk North.
My last comment seems to have stirred up discussion. Good! Here are some points in reponse.
Firstly, and most importantly, Richard makes a key point when he relates constituency predictions to opinion poll swings in the North West. It seems to me that people contributing to this site in general fail to link their observations about individual constituencies to national opinion poll figures. Richard is quite right to point out that the opinion poll figures, which we should interpret in relation to the regional and demographic information provided by the pollsters, are suggesting that the Tories will win constituencies which we find almost incredible. In 1997, people just did not believe that the seats suggested by the polls would change hands, but they did. We shouldn’t be caught out again. Not least, there are practical issues for party managers as to which seats can be won or saved by local campaigning or whistle-stop visits during the election.
I have previously suggested on this site that if Labour had actually believed they would get a landslide in 1997 they could have picked off several more seats, for instance in East Anglia, which would have made it even harder for the Tories to come back.
Whilst some of the Tory targets around 150 on the list are surprising, others are old friends from the 1970s and even the 1950s, e.g. Chorley. They are traditionally marginal areas which have looked safe in the landslides of the 1980s and 1997/2001. And their demographics have not changed drastically.
Secondly, my previous post related specifically to Labour/Conservative marginals. Pete Whitehead is right here. Even if the Conservatives are picking up some LibDem seats, I cannot see them getting ones below 150 on the Tory target list. For example, not Sheffield Hallam where Clegg is going to benefit from the huge publicity he will get as party leader.
It follows that if I suggest that the Tories will win Labour seat up to around 150 on their target list, it does not mean they will make 150 gains, because the LibDem and minor party seats they do not gain will need to be deleted from the notional gains list. So if, for the sake of argument, the Tories win all their Labour targets up to Coventry South and no more they will make perhaps 120 – 130 gains (you can be more precise by counting the target list), not 150. Which brings us to the top end of Joe James B’s expectation of a Tory majority of up to 50.
Thirdly, we have to look at how much of Labour’s vote might disappear to minor parties. Sadly, a number of the seats Richard find incredible are ones where some Labour vote could move to the BNP. A couple of them (Oldham, Huddersfield) also have Liberal traditions, so a Labour to LibDem swing could let in the TorIes. And although the Greens seem to be out of public mind at present, York Central has a substantial Green challenge which could take disaffected Labour votes, and whilst I know the boundaries are different York was after all Conservative from 1950 – 1966 and in the 1980s. A further issue is York is that it is a railway town and could suffer from the RMT’s lack of supprt for New Labour.
Finally, I doubt how much it matters that there is a lack of positive enthusiasm for Cameron’s Conservatives. All the psephological wisdom is that it is Governments that lose elections rather than Oppositions that win them. Of course, this point changes if disaffected votes are split by the intervention of a minor party that takes votes away from the Tories; but this does not appear to be happening at present.
I don’t think Norfolk North will be particularly close as long as Norman Lamb is standing.
With the possible exceptions of Berwickshire (where the Conservatives have the MSP) and Winchester and Harrogate (where the MPs are standing down) I can’t see any Conservative gains from the LibDems beyond target 100.
I think they’ll also fail to win several LibDem constituencies with smaller majorities as well.
I think the LDs will hold most of the seats in Cornwall even though their majorities are not that large.
Andy – I agree with that, maybe 4 will stay Lib Dem and 2 will go Conservative