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