Labour to Gain from New Bristol West Boundaries?

With the changes to the boundaries of the Bristol West parliamentary

constituency, a leading political survey group has suggested that the

Labour Party have the most potential to gain from the re-configured

shape of Bristol West.

UK Polling Report have analysed the

results of votes cast in the 2005 general election in Bristol West by

looking only at the results from those wards which form the new,

changed, constituency. In this analysis, votes cast by the electorate in

Westbury on Trym, Henleaze and Stoke Bishop are discounted, along with

those from Lockleaze and Kingsweston - all now in the Bristol North West

constituency. The votes cast in the wards which are new to Bristol West

are included - those in Ashley, Easton and Lawrence Hill.

The

result of this exercise is a "notional result" for the 2005 elections

which shows the winning majority of LibDem candidate Stephen Williams

whittled down to a narrow victory of 640 votes - or 40.5% of the votes

cast - compared with 39% cast for the Labour candidate at the time, MP

Valerie Davey.

Recognising that this "notional result" has

several problems for predicting future results, UKPR is quick to state

that, "Notional results are NOT a prediction of what will happen at the

next election." Furthermore, "they are NOT an estimate of how people would

have actually voted if the new boundaries had been used in 2005" as they

do not allow for the reality of tactical voting or other variables

specific to those circumstances. The notional result, however, simply

totals the votes cast for the different parties in the wards that now

make up Bristol West.

Noting that the majority of parliamentary

seats in England and Wales will have new boundaries in the forthcoming

election, UKPR broadly concludes that this year, "nearly all boundary

reviews favour the Conservative party." In this context, the claim that

the notional result for the Conservatives in 2005 would have seen the

party's third place position slashed to 13.7% of the vote in 2005

(compared to an actual result of 26.9%) must be of concern to

Conservative candidate Nick Yarker, who is competing for the Bristol

West seat in May's election.

The full notional results from the

2005 elections are:

Liberal

Democrat: 18051 (40.5%)

Labour: 17411 (39%)

Conservative: 6117

(13.7%)

Other: 3010 (6.8%)

LibDem Majority: 640 (1.4%)

Source

UK Polling Group