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Whilst we are on the subject of 'fair' voting....

Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Despite my highest mathematical achievement being a 'C' at 'O' level (for which I needed coaching...), I derive much pleasure from fiddling around with electoral statistics, and armed with the turnout figures for the election I have derived an electorate of 45,533,309 and have then allocated the 650 seats to the regions based on actual population, rather than the near-gerrymandered ones we actually voted for.  This sees the following adjustments:

Wales -8
SW +2
SE +6
London +2
Eastern +3
East Midlands +2
West Midlands -1
North West - unchanged
Yorkshire & Humberside -1
North East -1
Scotland -4
NI -1

If each party had secured the same percentage of seats in each region under these theoretical boundaries as they did last week, the Tories would have an extra nine seats (316), Labour would have lost seven (251), the LDs would be flat and PC would have lost one (2).  The vegetation-coloured Far Left of Brighton Pavillion would be unchanged.  I have assumed that Thirsk will stay blue.  Northern Ireland presents something of a problem, in that rounding up and down confuses things horribly....

This still leaves us in hung Parliament territory, but Con + DUP comes to 324, and given that the Shinners are not keen on turning up to vote, Lab+LD+SNP+PC+SDLP+Alliance+Sylvia Hermon comes to 322.

Interesting, no?

Update - Idle Pen Pusher has been doing something similar, and it is well worth the read..

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posted by Croydonian

Crowdsourcing the election - #4 Yorkshire & the Humber

Tuesday, April 13, 2010
And another one.  This time I have Conservative up 15 (24), Labour down 17 (27) and LD unchanged on three.  2005 map here.

And the counties (decidedly not to scale):


Data:

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posted by Croydonian

Crowdsourcing the election - #3 Eastern region

And even more....  I make it Conservatives 37 (+ 9), Labour 1 (-9) - achieving a near wipe out and LD unchanged at two.  2005 map here.

The five counties:



Source data:


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posted by Croydonian

Crowdsourcing the election - #2 Wales

More of the same.  Conservatives + 5, Labour -6, LD -1, Plaid +2, Independent unchanged.  2005 map here.

The map:



And the data:


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posted by Croydonian

Crowdsourcing the election - #1 London

I have been looking at the current state of betting over at Betfair, and based on the shortest odds, I am calling London's results as Conservative - 36, Labour - 31 and LD - 6. (E&OE....) Having peered at a 2005 results map, I make that C + 15, L - 13 and LD  - 2.  There are the issues of boundary changes and the Brent / Croydon Central problems, but I think the exercise was worth doing.

Here's a rough and ready map - and the Tories taking Poplar and Limehouse *is* how the market is calling it:

There's a 2005 results map here.

I am quite keen on repeating the exercise with other areas, so if anyone would like to volunteer to take a region, supply some smarter looking graphics, or if those nice people at Betfair would like to pitch in with an easier way of accessing the data, full credit will be given, along with my undying gratitude.

Here's a screenshot of my workings:

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posted by Croydonian

The Irish Lisbon vote

Monday, October 05, 2009
Herewith a nifty map 'borrowed' from ElectoralGeography.com:



Intriguing that the yes vote was - broadly - at its weakest along the frontier with Northern Ireland, and at its strongest in the capital and its environs.  Dublin South East looks to be the keenest at 78.7/21.3, although DSE is the equivalent of Kensington & Chelsea or the City in UK terms. This could be a reflection of where the power lies in Ireland, or perhaps, the relative strength of Sinn Fein in the border areas and Tralee it being one of the few parties to campaign against Lisbon:



As to the result, that's their business, although I wish it had gone otherwise. 

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posted by Croydonian

A brief observation on the German elections

Thursday, October 01, 2009
Here, courtesy of those lovely people at  Electoral Geography is a map of the vote for the Left Party.  Readers are challenged to see if they can reconstruct the frontier between the Federal Republic and the 'Democratic Republic':



The Saarland has a bit of a tendency to vote for its local lad made bad, Oskar Lafontaine.  Meanwhile, round of applause for Baden-Wurttemburg for giving the FDP its highest share at 18.8%

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posted by Croydonian

A little light data crunching of the Croydon euro results

Tuesday, June 09, 2009
The Guardian has been rather helpful in providing an online spreadsheet of results by borough, authority and so on, and having time on my hands and an unnatural interest in matters psephological I have knocked up a pie chart showing the euro results, and then one for 2005 in the three Croydon seats combined:

And Croydon North, South and home sweet Croydon Central:

So, Tory and Lib Dem shares were both down around seven percentage points, but Labour fell off a cliff - down 20 percentage points. UKIP, as expected, did far better than in the general election, with the Greens also substantially outperforming their showing in the GE. Mind you, they only stood in Central. Neither the B*P nor the Christian People's Alliance risked lost deposits in any of the Croydon seats.

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posted by Croydonian

Whatever happened to fact checking?

Wednesday, June 03, 2009
Here is a scan of part of page from today's Telegraph (That's page 21, fact fans):




Anything strike you as odd? Well, the East Midlands would appear to be a hotbed of tree-hugging, with two Greens, two Tories, one Socialist and a Lib Dem.

What actually happened in the East Midlands is that they elected two Tories, two UKIPers, a Socialist and a Lib Dem. Such an easy mistake to make....

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posted by Croydonian

Why are there so many badly-named parliamentary constituencies?

Sunday, March 01, 2009
I have been musing on why there are so many dreadfully uninspired names for parliamentary constituencies, and why there seems to be so little consistency in nomenclature - the fun never stops here at Croydonian Towers. While there are horrors scattered all over the map, I am going to focus on London for now.

The boroughs of Harrow and Croydon get an especially raw deal, with those wits at the Boundary Commission unable to come up with anything less pedestrian than East and West and North, Central and South respectively. I would not reckon myself much of an expert on Harrow, but given that Omnia Croydonia In Tres Partes Divisa Est, why not try Thornton Heath, Croydon Town & Shirley and Coulsdon & Purley?

Looking to the west, the borough of Sutton does not have to suffer the indignities of Suttons east and west, but has Sutton & Cheam and Carshalton & Wallington, and to the east Bromley has Beckenham, Orpington and Bromley & Chiselhurst.

Other boroughs manage a half-way house between the Croydon and Sutton approaches, with Islington having Islington North and Islington South & Finsbury. Why not, say, Islington North & Highbury? The people of the east of Brent will be electing an MP for Hampstead & Kilburn next time round, a signal improvement on Brent East.

Further afield, Birmingham has constituency names that show some soul - Selly Oak, Perry Barr and so forth, not Birmingham North East etc, while No Mean City has gone backwards and dumped the likes of Kelvin and Maryhill for dull references to points on the compass. Admittedly there is the issue of MSPs seating for seats with the older names, but even so..

Looking at the other conurbations, Manchester gets decent names, as do Liverpool and Sheffield while Leeds, Bristol, Newcastle and Edinburgh labour along with the more prosaic.

The rest of the Anglosphere paints a mixed picture, with the Americans managing to outdo us for flatfootedness - numbered congressional districts, while Australia goes for snappy one word names in the main, Canada perhaps overdoes it with a blizzard of hyphenation and New Zealand goes in for the North, South business. Dullola. Our Hibernian neighbours have a list system with giant constituencies based on the historic counties and sundry divisions of Dublin. Since no day is complete without a mention of what the French get up to, they appear to use the same vanilla system as the Americans. Fie 0n them.

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posted by Croydonian

The art of crafting a convincing manifesto

Thursday, February 19, 2009
From, where else, the 'Democratic People's Republic' of Korea, and from Kim Jong Il himself:

"Voters' meetings were held in all constituencies of the country to nominate candidates for deputies to the 12th Supreme People's Assembly...they nominated me as candidate for the post of deputy to the Supreme People's Assembly....

I extend my heartfelt thanks to the entire electorate of the country for their deep trust in me. True to President Kim Il Sung's noble will, I will live up to the expectations of the entire electorate by devoting my all to the prosperity of the country and happiness of the people, mixing myself with the service personnel and the people all the time.

All voters should take part in the election as one with high pride and honour of having created a new, brilliant history of our country, our motherland, under the leadership of the great leader and the great Party and true to their duty as citizens of the Republic, thereby rendering active contributions to consolidating our state and social system and people's government rock-solid.


Note that he does not, anywhere, say 'vote for me', still less 'please vote for me', and astonishingly the open letter would seem to suggest that he thinks he has it in the bag. Astonishing.

I do hope that the news channels carry election night coverage, as judging from the 2003 results we should be in for a thriller - 687 seats for the Workers' Party of Korea, no change, and "According to the report by the Central Election Committee on August 4, 99.9 percent of all the eligible voters registered on the poll books went to the polls and 100 percent of the casters voted for the candidates of deputies to the SPA who had registered at all the constituencies". Source

The DPRK's release entitled 'The Superior Election System of the DPRK' notwithstanding, 99.9% is beyond absurd, as proxy voting is strictly banned, and as Snelling notes in 'Stranger than the Bullet' (Robson, 2002), "Even the most up-to-date and well-produced electoral register will yield at least a 2 or 3 per cent vote for the Dead Party". It also seems highly unlikely that just one in a thousand have not been correctly identified as 'mentally deranged' (their term, not mine), are bed-ridden up in the hills etc etc.

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posted by Croydonian

Another look at the Knesset results

Thursday, February 12, 2009
Having an unhealthy level of interest in matters psephological, I have had a look at Knesset election results since 1949 (all figures taken from Wikipedia, which I hope I can trust) and had a go at charting seats won by the leading political parties. Given that Israeli political parties like splitting, winning big for an election and then disappearing, there are issues with continuity, but there is the certainty that at any election there will be a left Zionist party, heirs to Herzl, Ben Gurion and the other founding fathers (and mothers) - Mapai / Labour, a right or Revisionist Zionist party, heirs to Jabotinsky and Begin - Herut / Likud, a far left party - Mapam / Meretz and at least one major party that is deeply Orthodox. As such, I have attempted to pick my way through the labyrinth of splits, hissy fits, renamings and so forth in order to show how the state of the parties has changed over 60 years.

The breakthrough of Yisrael Beitenu has been treated as one of the major themes of coverage outside Israel, along with the eclipse of the Labour party. However, YB was fairly well placed last time, and Labour has been in decline since the 60s. Equally, Likud's results were its second weakest in 40 years. The far left Mapam / Meretz grouping appears to be heading for oblivion, while Shas, the Sephardic Orthodox party is treading water. The National Religious Party appears to have a more fluid electoral position than one might have thought, and it is tempting to suggest that YB has taken votes from it this time round. What is also evident is the inability of either Likud or Kadima (or once upon a time, Labour) to reach the 61 seat mark by allying with a few small parties, and even a two party grand coalition would not have a majority now, but would have to be Likud/Kadima/Labour. Labour /Likud had a combined 95 seats in '81, whereas Likud/Kadima/Labour now muster 68 seats between them.

I might add in the Arab parties later.

And now in mono for Geoff and anyone else who is colour blind:


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posted by Croydonian

A miscellany of Israeli election odds and ends

Wednesday, February 11, 2009
First the election broadcast of the Holocaust Survivors and Grown-Up Green Leaf [Cannabis enthusiasts] parties alliance. Yes, really.



Ha'aretz has the story. Well worth reading.

And a little light data mining from here. 15% of Bedouin voted for non-Arab parties, including a possibly rather confused 2% who voted for Shas, the religious party for the Sephardim.

Kibbutzniks voted left - 31% for Labour, 18% for Meretz and 2% Meimad. Kadima got a further 31%.

In Sederot, 33% voted Likud and 23% Yisrael Beitenu. TA went for Kadima - 34% to 21% for Likud. Jerusalem swung 24% Likud, 19% United Torah Judaism, 15% Shas. Ma'aleh Adumim, the largest town in Judea Samaria voted 45% Likud, 15% Yisrael Beitenu, and a derisory 3% for Labour.

To be updated, probably.

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posted by Croydonian

And the results are in...

Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Unnoticed by much of the world, Greenland has been voting on home rule, and those fine people at Sermitsiaq have published the results and I have taken the opportunity to map them....

White represents unincorporated areas, and shades of grey ascending gradations of 60%+, peaking at 92% (black) for Kangaatsiaq. The heaving metropolis of Nuuk, or Godthåb, (pop. 15,047) is one of the least enthusiastic at 63%.

But what of the red blob? That is the municipality of Ivittuut, where just 23% want self-rule. And for why? Perchance because it is home to 'the Danish naval headquarters of Greenland'. Nothing like knowing which side your bread is buttered, is there? Mind you, just 65 of the electorate of 119 could be bothered to make it the polling station.

Thule Air base is in the extreme North East (Qaanaaq) and is entirely self-contained without offering employment to the locals, by the look of things, so no red blob there. Note that the settlement of Moriusaq, all of 19 miles from Thule, saw 100% voting for home rule, although that was three people out of seven voting.

Other notable findings include the outbreak of spoilt ballots in Kujalleq, at 11 out of 94 and the three blanks (out of 56) in Narsaq. There was a 13% blank 'vote' in Nalunaq, but that looks to be the work of just one voter. One in the five voters in Upernaviarsuk spoilt his or her ballot.

While I derive an unnatural degree of entertainment from the availability of data at this degree of detail, I do wonder whether there might be scope for post-electoral recriminations if a vote is very tightly contested or a controversial party is voted for.

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posted by Croydonian

A Union Flag-bedecked elephant in the room?

Saturday, October 04, 2008
Those lovely people at the News of the World have been kind enough to commission a poll of marginals, the headline findings here. It predicts a 78 seat majority for the blue team, and doubtless will be reported and commented on elsewhere.

However, what is a tad more bloggable - by my reckoning - is the breakdown of detail available at ICM Research's site. A fairly hefty 8% of those polled opt for fringe parties, with the SNP on 2%, Plaid on 1%, the Greens on 1% and UKIP on 1%. The NOTW refers specifically to Britain in its item, so the remaining 4% should not be supporters of the Ulster parties. A quick scan of the 2005 election results shows that the BNP was by far the most successful of those parties not already named, directly or indirectly. They polled 0.7% of the popular vote in 2005, winning no seats, natch. Excluding the deeply nebulous 'Independent', the only other parties attracting more than 0.1% of the vote were Respect and Sheridan's merry band of Trots, the SSP.

Clearly a poll of marginals and the overall popular vote in 2005 are not strictly comparable, but we are talking Galas and Granny Smiths rather than apples and oranges.

More on the detail on policies, individuals etc later, probably.


Sticking with union flags, note this comment from Noel Gallagher - the talented one of the two - in the Irish Times:

"I clearly remember my mam saying to me and my two brothers when we were growing up: 'You're only English because you were born here.' And with a mother from Mayo and a father from Co Meath, there's not a drop of English blood in me. I recently had a child with my Scottish girlfriend, and there's no English blood in him at all.

"I feel as Irish as the next person".


Then do a google images search on 'Noel Gallagher Union Jack'..... (Yes, I know that is the flag of the union, not England, but it certainly doesn't include the Republic's tricolour, does it?)

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posted by Croydonian

2010 - Year Zero for the Labour Left, or a new dawn?

Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Having myself suggested that a post 2010 Labour rump would be dominated by the Left, I have taken as my starting point the current opinion polls which suggest a Labour strength of 165 come The Reckoning. Much could change between now and then, but I am prepared to stick my neck out and aver that the Labour party will not make any net gains in May 2010.

And how to measure who rates as being indisputably of the Left? Membership of the Campaign Group is a rather fine indicator. There are 24 of them, and a further nine ex members in Parliament who sold out / grew up / needed the money. If those current member MPs with majorities of less than 5000 are scythed down, that cuts it to 20. Looking good for the hard left, but there's a caveat - the remainder will have an average age of just under 63, with four over 70. The nearest thing to a young turk is Katy Clark, a mere child at 41 compared to the Methuselahs of the Left, and with a majority of 11,296 presumably among the least anxious tribunes of the Peoples' Party.

Clearly there are rather more than 24 lefties in the PLP, so the next step was to root around in Hansard for serial rebels, and I have used the 2003 Iraq and 2007 Trident votes as my proxies. Clearly these are fairly blunt instruments for sheep / goat optimum arrangement, as Kate Hoey, inter alia, figures in the list. However, it seems reasonable to think that there were members of the payroll vote who decided that the spoils of office and chances of preferment were more important than doing a Luther and taking a stand.

So, the combined figure for rebels in either vote comes to 124, or around a third of the PLP. Among those are Derek Wyatt, majority 79, who can be expected to lose unless the best placed rival candidate is caught in flagrante in a BDSM tryst with an underage poodle. The Blue candidate looks to be of impeccable character, however. A south easterly zephyr would take out a further six of those Labour MPs with majorities of less than four figures.

Upping the ante to MPs with majorities of less than 5000 cuts down 39 MPs. However, Baxter is showing Labour MPs with majorities a good deal higher ripe for the chop. Supposing a uniform swing etc etc, and no new Sparticists scraping home, I make it around 50 'out' rebels out of 175 Labour MPs come the reckoning. However, Ms Clark remains the youngest of the group, with only another four under 50, and nine will be septuagenarians come 2010.

There are caveats surrounding MPs who have announced they are stepping down or are currently whipless, so any additional information is welcome. Also the marshalling and mining of the data took ages, so linkage or failing that a comment or two might convince me that this was a better use of my time than actually getting on with work.

PS - On a Portillo swing (16,996), there would be just four lefties left, with an average age of 71
1/2.

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posted by Croydonian

And I thought the Boundary Commission moved slowly...

As every man, woman, child, dog and stick insect knows, the boundary commission is not very good at keeping up with population change at constituency level, and the average Labour seat has rather fewer people than Tory ones, but that is a tale for another day. Anyway, at least they make changes from time to time.

However, the French commissariat has decided that maybe, just maybe, it should have a look at French constituencies, for the first time since 1986. In that time the population has risen by nine million, or around 16%.

Le Figaro has some of the details, noting which departements have seen the greatest population falls and rises, although the government itself is being very cagey about practical seat redistribution. Among those departments etc where people are moving out are Paris, Nord, Pas-de-Calais, Marne, Somme and Seine-maritime. Cross referencing those with a map of the 2007 second round results, Nord, Pas de Calais, Somme and Seine-maritime are comparative nests of Socialists.

As to the winners - Hérault (hi Mum), Haute-Garonne, Gironde, Gard, Vaucluse, Var, the two Savoys, Isère, Ain, Seine-et-Marne, Val-d'Oise - Haute Garonne, Gironde and Isère swing leftwards, owing to the impact of Toulouse, Bordeaux and Grenoble.

So, looking good for Sarko and the UMP next time round.

Libe has just put up a map, for those who like that sort of thing.

(I am fiddling around with some figures and aim to do a psephological post later on the prospects for the Labour hard and soft left if the next election is truly Year Zero)

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posted by Croydonian