Enfield North
Notional 2005 Results:
Conservative: 17100 (43%)
Labour: 16190 (40.7%)
Liberal Democrat: 4581 (11.5%)
BNP: 891 (2.2%)
Other: 975 (2.5%)
Majority: 911 (2.3%)
Actual 2005 result
Conservative: 16135 (39.6%)
Labour: 18055 (44.3%)
Liberal Democrat: 4642 (11.4%)
BNP: 1004 (2.5%)
UKIP: 750 (1.8%)
Other: 163 (0.4%)
Majority: 1920 (4.7%)
2001 Result
Conservative: 15597 (40.9%)
Labour: 17888 (46.9%)
Liberal Democrat: 3355 (8.8%)
UKIP: 247 (0.6%)
BNP: 605 (1.6%)
Other: 451 (1.2%)
Majority: 2291 (6%)
1997 Result
Conservative: 17326 (36.3%)
Labour: 24148 (50.7%)
Liberal Democrat: 4264 (8.9%)
Referendum: 857 (1.8%)
Other: 1074 (2.3%)
Majority: 6822 (14.3%)
Boundary changes
Current MP: Joan Ryan (Labour) (more information at They work for you)
Candidates:
Nick de Bois (Conservative)
2001 Census Demographics
Total 2001 Population: 90825
Male: 47.9%
Female: 52.1%
Under 18: 24.1%
Over 60: 18.4%
Born outside UK: 16.4%
White: 85.8%
Black: 6.6%
Asian: 3.9%
Mixed: 2.6%
Other: 1.1%
Christian: 69.1%
Hindu: 1.5%
Jewish: 0.8%
Muslim: 6%
Full time students: 3.9%
Graduates 16-74: 18.1%
No Qualifications 16-74: 30.2%
Owner-Occupied: 71.4%
Social Housing: 18.7% (Council: 15.3%, Housing Ass.: 3.4%)
Privately Rented: 7.4%
Homes without central heating and/or private bathroom: 7.6%
A week is a long time in politics!!! You don’t have to be a Labour London MP in order to have two homes within four and a half minutes walk from each other!!
Now that sleeze is back in the Tories court we might see a Labour lead emerge again in the polls.
Hang on Iain, ALL parties are implicated in this (including the SNP and Lib Dems), I hate to burst your bubble but I cannot see how or why a Labour lead would emerge from a 22 point deficit – you might believe in Gordon Brown’s “strong handling” of the economy but you are in a minority!
If the conservatives cannot win here, then David Cameron might as well pack up his bags and go home.
I think that the Expenses scandal has affected all of the mainstream parties, Iain, and so I don’t think that it will benefit Labour to any great extent.
What I would expect is that by the time of the election, the level of protest voting that people clearly made during the European elections subsides so that the main parties see results more in line with national opinion polls.
Con gain or around 4,000. Unlike in many other north London seats, the fall in the Labour vote will be limited. My prediction:
Cons 21,000
Lab 17,000
Lib 5000
Others 3,000
Higher turnout
This was on basis statistics a better Tory prospect than Enfield Southgate following 2001. What has changed here?
Is it true that Labour controlled Norwich City Council from 1945 till at least the late 1980’s, even when it had two Tory MP’s.
Justin, can you say what reason you have for thinking that the Labour vote might fall less here than in other North London seats? I can’t think of any obvious reason.
Neil Turner is right. Unless something very drastic happens to change the national state of public opinion between now and the next General Election this seat should be a very easy gain for the Conservatives.
Peter. I think you are correct abour Norwich City Council, but I don’t see what it has to do with Enfield!
I think Justin is being a bit cautious. I’d be happy to see Joan Ryan lose by 4,000 votes but I think she will lose by more than that. In 2005 Labour were a solid outfit. In 2009 their campaign machine is shot to pieces. On the other hand, under Cameron the Tories’ campaign machine has improved massively as we’ve seen in Crewe, London (for Boris), and in Norwich.
4,000? I think it could be double that. But I’m happy as long as she’s gone.
There were signs of Joan Ryan’s popularity in the 2005 result so if she stands again she may slightly reduce the scale of Labour’s defeat.
The 2005 result in Enfield North was perhaps the result I found most surprising: on the election night programme comments were made about this seat being more working class than Enfield Southgate but that’s not much of an explanation given that seats like Hornchurch and Romford are pretty similar to Enfield North.
Of course, its still entirely possible that Joan Ryan could be the last Labour MP for Enfield North for a very long time once she loses next year.
I agree with Andy that the 2005 result was quite surprising given how well the Tories did back in 2001 compared to Southgate where they did very poorly. Then again, perhaps it was just that North had its swing against Labour in 2001 and then stayed steady, whilst Southgate did not have its swing until 2005.
Similarly, we may well see above average swings to the Tories at the next election in seats where they have done poorly since 1997 (these seats still having the 2001-05 swings to come on top of the expected swing next year). I’m thinking that a seat like Morecambe and Lunesdale could be at particular risk from this theory.
That’s one of the biggest conundrums when making predictions – whether a seat which hasn’t swung very much in the previous election indicates that it won’t swing much again, or that the swing will be quite large to compensate for the previous low swing.
It’s often one of the harder things to predict.
Sometimes places do unravel in a way which is hard to picture before.
But I have little trouble predicting this result – if the Tories fail to take/hold it then the potential convulsions are almost unimaginable.
It must be sensible in the current climate to predict something along the lines of ….
Conservative: 47 – 49%
Labour: 34-36%