Boundary changes: Labour and Lib Dems set for big losses, first analysis shows

Guardian analysis looks at how the 2010 election could have panned out under England’s proposed new boundaries • Get the data • Full list of new constituencies The Conservatives could have been within striking distance of an overall majority had the 2010 general election been held under England’s new boundaries, early Guardian analysis suggests. The Labour party could have netted 14 fewer seats, the Liberal Democrats 10 fewer, while the Conservatives, who dominate England, might have lost just six seats. The UK’s only Green MP, Caroline Lucas, would not have been able to win her seat, according to the preliminary figures. The initial analysis, carried out by the Guardian data team, is based on figures released by the boundary commission, showing the makeup of each of England’s 502 new constituencies – breaking down exactly which previous constituencies voters came from. Using these figures and the results of the 2010 general election, the exercise modelled the effects of a uniform swing from the old boundaries to new. In reality, the effect on MPs’ seats is more complex to measure as voters are not spread evenly across constituencies: some areas within may heavily favour one party, others its main rival. The new boundaries reduce the total number of constituencies in England by 31, to 502. Assuming, until Scotland and Wales’ boundary commissions report in the next few months, that MPs in those countries remain unchanged, the Conservatives would have been just 10 seats short of an overall majority, versus 19 at present. Any prospects of a Labour-led “rainbow coalition” would have been still more remote, with the parties having 24 fewer seats between them. These early results corroborate fears from rival parties that Conservatives would be the major beneficiaries of boundary reform. At present, the Conservative parties tend to have larger majorities than Labour or Liberal Democrat MPs, providing a greater degree of protection against such changes. The Conservative party has a far larger share of its MPs in England than either the Labour or the Lib Democrats. 297 of the 306 Tory MPs have English constituencies, versus 191 of Labour’s 258 MPs and 43 of the Liberal Democrats’ total of 57. Consequently, the latter two parties are at significantly greater risk of losing still more seats to nationalist rivals in the wake of the yet-to-be-announced boundary changes in Scotland and Wales. The full data – and our workings – are below. What do you think? Data summary Download the data • DATA: download the full spreadsheet More open data Data journalism and data visualisations from the Guardian World government data • Search the world’s government data with our gateway Development and aid data • Search the world’s global development data with our gateway Can you do something with this data? • Flickr Please post your visualisations and mash-ups on our Flickr group • Contact us at data@guardian.co.uk • Get the A-Z of data • More at the Datastore directory • Follow us on Twitter • Like us on Facebook Boundary changes House of Commons Electoral reform Labour Conservatives Liberal Democrats Green party Simon Rogers James Ball guardian.co.uk

Posted by on September 13, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.