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 Election 2019 number crunching, The geeky thread |
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 Dec 17 2019, 10:03 PM
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#1
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 BuzzJack Legend
Joined: 13 April 2007
Posts: 36,654 User: 3,272 
        
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I know there are at least two people here (including me) who like to study election results while trying to be reasonably impartial. The only spreadsheet-ready data I can find atm comes courtesy of electoral calculus - https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/electdata_2019.txt. I assume some more sophisticated spreadsheets will become available later - I may wait for them before I get properly stuck in.
One thing I did quickly in the light of vidcapper's comments elsewhere was to sort the seats by order of size of electorate. Of the thirty largest electorates, thirteen (just under half) are Labour seats. As the boundaries are about fifteen years old, that is quite surprising. |
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Dec 17 2019, 10:32 PM
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 Howdy, disco citizens
Joined: 16 January 2010
Posts: 12,775 User: 10,455
  
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I've already imported that data into Microsoft Excel to dig into (God bless Text To Columns). I think they've come a bit unstuck when it comes to sorting the NI constituencies - It puts the DUP as "Lib Dems" and the Alliance as "Brexit".
I've also counted 19 people elected called "Chris", "Christopher" , "Christian" or "Christine" - which I think might prove my nominative theory (although admittedly most of them were already MPs at the start of the campaign). |
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Dec 17 2019, 10:41 PM
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#3
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Howdy, disco citizens
Joined: 16 January 2010
Posts: 12,775 User: 10,455
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Other name fun - there are 24 Mac's or Mc's elected, but only 6 of them are from Scottish constituencies, and none from NI.
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Dec 17 2019, 10:55 PM
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#4
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 Cœur poids plume
Joined: 3 November 2007
Posts: 18,129 User: 4,718
   
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QUOTE(Suedehead2 @ Dec 17 2019, 11:03 PM)  One thing I did quickly in the light of vidcapper's comments elsewhere was to sort the seats by order of size of electorate. Of the thirty largest electorates, thirteen (just under half) are Labour seats. As the boundaries are about fifteen years old, that is quite surprising. Interesting but not too surprising to me. I imagine that in 2005, the largest constituencies were very Conservative but thanks to demographic changes and the Conservative vote being increasingly based on social conservatism (i.e. age) rather than economic prosperity, I imagine that is increasingly less the case. So the upcoming boundary changes have been scaring Labour MPs for a while, but by the time they are enacted, they might even be beneficial as the Tories become the party of towns that are declining both in terms of their economy and population. On that note, Centre for Towns have a great tool that can show us the changes that different parts of Britain underwent between 1981 and 2011. Biddulph is on the left, part of the Stoke-On-Trent conurbation in Staffordshire, a county which has gone from returning 3/12 Conservative MPs in 2005 to 12/12 in 2019. Canterbury is on the right, and has a large proportion of graduates and graduate jobs and is generally trending Labour.  Biddulph, alongside the rest of Stoke, has a large loss of not only young people but also families. The young people growing up in and leaving Biddulph will be disproportionately those who went to university. In return, the proportion of retirees has nearly doubled. Canterbury is growing nine times faster overall, but the growth amongst retirees is relatively small. Most of the growth comes from younger people. Note that the UK overall has an ageing population, so having the under 45s, and also the population of children (where even Canterbury shows decline) grow more than the retiree population is an exception rather than the rule. Similarly, the population of England grew 15% between 1981 and 2011, so even though Biddulph shows some population growth, it's a decline relative to elsewhere. |
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Dec 17 2019, 11:10 PM
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#5
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Cœur poids plume
Joined: 3 November 2007
Posts: 18,129 User: 4,718
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Did Burntwood (West Midlands hinterland, gammon central and probably my least favourite part of England) vs. Portsmouth for fun too.
 Burntwood and other seats in the area (Aldridge-Brownhills, Cannock Chase) are wealthier than other parts of the Black Country but could hardly be described as vibrant. They are now amongst the safest Tory seats in the whole country. |
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Dec 17 2019, 11:11 PM
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#6
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I'll just stick around and do some more damage
Joined: 14 February 2009
Posts: 115,038 User: 8,300
            
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I keep seeing that the current boundaries supposedly favour Labour but not sure how that can be the case when the Tories won far more seats than their voteshare would get them under a PR system, while Labour actually won slightly fewer? But then again it was said during the last election that the Tories would need a 7% national vote lead to guarantee a majority while Labour would not have needed that large a lead. I am confuse.
Either way, death to FPTP. There's no reason a party should ever have an advantage based on how the electoral map is divided, whether or not that advantage is in favour of my opinion. |
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Dec 17 2019, 11:12 PM
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#7
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BuzzJack Legend
Joined: 13 April 2007
Posts: 36,654 User: 3,272
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QUOTE(Brett-Butler @ Dec 17 2019, 10:32 PM) I've already imported that data into Microsoft Excel to dig into (God bless Text To Columns). I think they've come a bit unstuck when it comes to sorting the NI constituencies - It puts the DUP as "Lib Dems" and the Alliance as "Brexit". I've also counted 19 people elected called "Chris", "Christopher" , "Christian" or "Christine" - which I think might prove my nominative theory (although admittedly most of them were already MPs at the start of the campaign). Thanks to text to columns indeed. I assume that's why it was presented in that format. I'm afraid I hadn't got round to looking at the NI results. That's one reason why I'm hoping for a more sophisticated spreadsheet in the next few days. On the subject of names, it isn't too long ago that the women MPs were outnumbered by men called John. |
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Dec 17 2019, 11:20 PM
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#8
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Cœur poids plume
Joined: 3 November 2007
Posts: 18,129 User: 4,718
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QUOTE(Michael Bubré @ Dec 18 2019, 12:11 AM) I keep seeing that the current boundaries supposedly favour Labour but not sure how that can be the case when the Tories won far more seats than their voteshare would get them under a PR system, while Labour actually won slightly fewer? But then again it was said during the last election that the Tories would need a 7% national vote lead to guarantee a majority while Labour would not have needed that large a lead. I am confuse. Either way, death to FPTP. There's no reason a party should ever have an advantage based on how the electoral map is divided, whether or not that advantage is in favour of my opinion. Yep, two different and slightly contradictory problems you've identified. The first is that the winning party - whoever it is - is almost guaranteed to win more seats than their voteshare should allow for just because of the way FPTP works, and the second is that the current seat distribution apparently favours Labour slightly. I say apparently because on (notoriously dodgy) Electoral Calculus I just put both Tories and Labour on 40% while keeping the other parties roughly the same and the Tories win 312 seats - almost a majority - while Labour win 264. But that might be something to do with the opposition parties being more anti-Tory than anti-Labour. edit: or what Suedehead said about voter distribution - Labour's is concentrated in large cities whereas the Tories' is more evenly spread out. That doesn't necessarily mean that the boundaries don't favour Labour, as their constituencies have historically had smaller populations. This post has been edited by Harve: Dec 17 2019, 11:25 PM |
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Dec 17 2019, 11:21 PM
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#9
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BuzzJack Legend
Joined: 13 April 2007
Posts: 36,654 User: 3,272
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QUOTE(Michael Bubré @ Dec 17 2019, 11:11 PM) I keep seeing that the current boundaries supposedly favour Labour but not sure how that can be the case when the Tories won far more seats than their voteshare would get them under a PR system, while Labour actually won slightly fewer? But then again it was said during the last election that the Tories would need a 7% national vote lead to guarantee a majority while Labour would not have needed that large a lead. I am confuse. Either way, death to FPTP. There's no reason a party should ever have an advantage based on how the electoral map is divided, whether or not that advantage is in favour of my opinion. The system favours parties that concentrate their support more effectively. Going back to 1997, Labour and the Lib Dems did that far more effectively than the Tories. That continued for the next two elections. By 2010, the Tories were targeting their efforts more effectively. In the 2015 election, their targeting was even more effective. |
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Dec 17 2019, 11:27 PM
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#10
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#38BBE0 otherwise known as 'sky blue'
Joined: 27 October 2008
Posts: 16,170 User: 7,561
 
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Thanks for those demographic statistics Harve. So the point vid made about demographics favouring Labour in constituencies that are becoming younger is true - but so is the reverse. I think the average age where someone was more likely to vote Conservative at this election was 44 (down from 47 in 2017) so the change in the 25-44 age group in each constituency is likely a crucial determiner as to which party the seat returns.
Would anybody be able to show a correlation between turnout and the swings to Conservative from Labour? The reason I ask is because it looked like the really big swings were in constituencies where the voter turnout was down by more than the UK average/median? Probably suggesting that Labour voters just stayed at home. E.g. Dudley North (59.2%, down 3.5%) 15.8% swing to Tories Wolverhampton North East (55.4%, down 4.6%) 12.2% swing to Tories |
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Dec 18 2019, 12:36 AM
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#11
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I'll just stick around and do some more damage
Joined: 14 February 2009
Posts: 115,038 User: 8,300
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Higher turnout would usually imply higher youth turnout (as older voters are more consistent in actually showing up) which should be good for Labour so it would stand to reason that there'd be a larger Tory swing in lower turnout areas.
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Dec 18 2019, 02:38 AM
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 I'm a paragon so don't perceive me
Joined: 3 February 2011
Posts: 37,409 User: 12,929     
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I've put in the spreadsheet and quickly added in turnout stats, but the three Hull seats are right at the bottom on turnout, hovering around 50%, each was held by Labour but had a swing towards Tories of 7%, 8% and 12% (Hull East). Could definitely use a plot graph to extrapolate data, it seems to sort of fit. I'm not certain where one could get swing stats without finding a similar 2017 table.
this is the thing though, when I was doing that, I'm not entirely certain if I screwed up somewhere, but the seat apparently at the bottom of the turnout, Stoke-on-Trent North, is given a population of 10k more in these stats than it apparently has on Wiki which is what puts it at the bottom. The interesting anomaly I immediately noticed by doing this was that East Dunbartonshire had the highest turnout of any seat by 1.5 percentage points. I suspect an excellent SNP ground game. However if I haven't screwed these up, the rest of the top 10 is filled with seats like Esher & Walton, Westmorland, Sheffield Hallam, Richmond Park and St Albans, seats where either the Lib Dems won or came a close second. Some of these received national attention during the campaign in attempts to unseat Tory MPs, but shows that where they have the apparatus, the LDs did very well at upping the turnout. |
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Dec 18 2019, 05:52 AM
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#13
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 Paul Hyett
Joined: 4 April 2006
Posts: 25,346 User: 364
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QUOTE(Suedehead2 @ Dec 17 2019, 10:03 PM) I know there are at least two people here (including me) who like to study election results while trying to be reasonably impartial. The only spreadsheet-ready data I can find atm comes courtesy of electoral calculus - https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/electdata_2019.txt. I assume some more sophisticated spreadsheets will become available later - I may wait for them before I get properly stuck in. One thing I did quickly in the light of vidcapper's comments elsewhere was to sort the seats by order of size of electorate. Of the thirty largest electorates, thirteen (just under half) are Labour seats. As the boundaries are about fifteen years old, that is quite surprising. First off  for that link, it's first I've seen!I must have a look if those 13 are newly-won seats... |
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Dec 18 2019, 05:59 AM
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#14
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Paul Hyett
Joined: 4 April 2006
Posts: 25,346 User: 364
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QUOTE(Harve @ Dec 17 2019, 10:55 PM) Interesting but not too surprising to me. I imagine that in 2005, the largest constituencies were very Conservative but thanks to demographic changes and the Conservative vote being increasingly based on social conservatism (i.e. age) rather than economic prosperity, I imagine that is increasingly less the case. So the upcoming boundary changes have been scaring Labour MPs for a while, but by the time they are enacted, they might even be beneficial as the Tories become the party of towns that are declining both in terms of their economy and population. I hope MIchael doesn't read the above, it just won't fit with his theories...  |
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Dec 18 2019, 09:29 AM
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#15
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BuzzJack Legend
Joined: 13 April 2007
Posts: 36,654 User: 3,272
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QUOTE(Holly and Izzy @ Dec 18 2019, 02:38 AM) I've put in the spreadsheet and quickly added in turnout stats, but the three Hull seats are right at the bottom on turnout, hovering around 50%, each was held by Labour but had a swing towards Tories of 7%, 8% and 12% (Hull East). Could definitely use a plot graph to extrapolate data, it seems to sort of fit. I'm not certain where one could get swing stats without finding a similar 2017 table. this is the thing though, when I was doing that, I'm not entirely certain if I screwed up somewhere, but the seat apparently at the bottom of the turnout, Stoke-on-Trent North, is given a population of 10k more in these stats than it apparently has on Wiki which is what puts it at the bottom. The interesting anomaly I immediately noticed by doing this was that East Dunbartonshire had the highest turnout of any seat by 1.5 percentage points. I suspect an excellent SNP ground game. However if I haven't screwed these up, the rest of the top 10 is filled with seats like Esher & Walton, Westmorland, Sheffield Hallam, Richmond Park and St Albans, seats where either the Lib Dems won or came a close second. Some of these received national attention during the campaign in attempts to unseat Tory MPs, but shows that where they have the apparatus, the LDs did very well at upping the turnout. That's an interesting observation about turnout. I wonder if one reason (purely a guess which might be completely wrong) is that voters whose first choice was Lib Dem but in the past have voted Labour or Tory as their second choice didn't bother to vote at all this time. |
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Dec 18 2019, 10:19 AM
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#16
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Paul Hyett
Joined: 4 April 2006
Posts: 25,346 User: 364
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QUOTE(Suedehead2 @ Dec 17 2019, 10:03 PM) I know there are at least two people here (including me) who like to study election results while trying to be reasonably impartial. The only spreadsheet-ready data I can find atm comes courtesy of electoral calculus - https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/electdata_2019.txt. I assume some more sophisticated spreadsheets will become available later - I may wait for them before I get properly stuck in. One thing I did quickly in the light of vidcapper's comments elsewhere was to sort the seats by order of size of electorate. Of the thirty largest electorates, thirteen (just under half) are Labour seats. As the boundaries are about fifteen years old, that is quite surprising. Just plugged those numbers into my own spreadsheet. 
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Dec 18 2019, 02:00 PM
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#17
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I'm a paragon so don't perceive me
Joined: 3 February 2011
Posts: 37,409 User: 12,929
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QUOTE(Suedehead2 @ Dec 18 2019, 09:29 AM) That's an interesting observation about turnout. I wonder if one reason (purely a guess which might be completely wrong) is that voters whose first choice was Lib Dem but in the past have voted Labour or Tory as their second choice didn't bother to vote at all this time. Either that or tactically voting for another party, but perhaps the data does indicate that among the non-voters there are people who'd be happy to vote for a LD but don't care enough to vote because they assume they have no chance in that area. I always assume when I see the Lib Dem vote total low in a seat that plenty of voters aren't voting for them because they consider them to have no chance so extending that beyond active voters isn't too much of a stretch. I do view their party machine as one that's very focused though - they'll have flooded those seats with leaflets and bar charts I have no doubt, and they did good with getting some of them into the news as close contests (if we take Richmond and Esher as the media-focused close contests pre-election then it's standout that I only recall one Tory-Labour fight given anywhere near as much individual seat attention, that being Chingford). Hard to say whether that support can hold up beyond those seats. |
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Dec 18 2019, 02:57 PM
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#18
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Paul Hyett
Joined: 4 April 2006
Posts: 25,346 User: 364
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I notice that most of seats with the biggest increase in turnout are ones held/won by the SNP, and the ones with the biggest drops, even when retained, are Labour.
Also, many of the seats with the biggest increases in electorate were traditional Labour seats, eg. Stoke-on-Trent Central (up 17.9%), but that didn't save Labour - that suggests to me that the 'Get Brexit Done' factor was far stronger than the 'youthquake'. This post has been edited by vidsanta: Dec 18 2019, 03:03 PM |
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Dec 19 2019, 08:09 AM
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#19
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Paul Hyett
Joined: 4 April 2006
Posts: 25,346 User: 364
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The highest Brexit vote shares...
% Barnsley Central 30.44 Barnsley East 29.19 Hartlepool 25.84 Blaenau Gwent 20.57 Doncaster North 20.38 Easington 19.50 Hull West and Hessle 17.98 Hull East 17.77 Rotherham 17.18 South Shields 17.02 The clear theme is of traditionally strong Labour areas voting Brexit because they just couldn't quite stomach voting Tory. In fact 19 of the top 20 Brexit seats (and 37 of the top 40) were still held by Labour (some only just). |
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Dec 21 2019, 02:31 AM
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#20
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Shakin Stevens
Joined: 29 December 2007
Posts: 46,140 User: 5,138
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QUOTE(Brett-Butler @ Dec 17 2019, 10:41 PM) Other name fun - there are 24 Mac's or Mc's elected, but only 6 of them are from Scottish constituencies, and none from NI. Shows Scots are spread throughout the UK |
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