For the third in our series looking at the Boundary Commission’s proposals for Parliamentary constituencies in South West England, I’m turning to Dorset and Wiltshire. The commission has linked these two counties in its review, and reduced the number of seats there from fifteen to fourteen by creating a constituency crossing the border between the two.
The map below shows the constituencies as they currently stand.
The Commission is proposing that four of these current seats remain unaltered. Labour has no MPs in these two counties now, but did lose three in 2010; these three are all unaltered and represent Labour’s only realistic chances of regaining Parliamentary representation form Dorset and Wiltshire. Below are the 2010 results.
- Swindon South
This is Labour’s best chance to retake in the two counties. It covers the southern half of Swindon, together with some large villages such as Wroughton.
Conservative: 19,687 (41.8%)
Labour: 16,143 (34.3%)
Liberal Democrat: 8,305 (17.6%)
UKIP: 2,029 (4.3%)
Others: 955 (2.0%)
- Swindon North
This is a bit more of a stretch for Labour to win. The seat includes the northern half of the town together with some more rural areas around the market town of Highworth.
Conservative: 22,408 (44.6%)
Labour: 15,348 (30.5%)
Liberal Democrat: 8,668 (17.2%)
UKIP: 1,842 (3.7%)
BNP: 1,542 (3.1%)
Others: 487 (1.0%)
- Dorset South
At the other end of the map lies Labour’s third loss last time round. The seat takes in the district of Weymouth and Portland along with the (peninsular rather than insular) Isle of Purbeck around Swanage. Jim Knight won this seat from the Tories in 2001 rather than the 1997 landslide, but despite a strong personal profile in the seat lost it by a wide margin in 2010 to the extravagantly named Richard Grosvenor Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax.
Conservative: 22,667 (45.1%)
Labour: 15,224 (30.3%)
Liberal Democrat: 9,557 (19.0%)
UKIP: 2,034 (4.0%)
Others: 595 (1.2%)
- West Dorset
The final unaltered seat is not one where Labour has any hopes, but the Liberal Democrats do. Conservative Oliver Letwin has not managed to obtain a majority of 7% in any of the four elections he has fought here.
The seat stretches west from Chesil Beach along the limestone coast as far as Lyme Regis and includes Dorchester, Sherborne and PJ Harvey‘s Bridport. Billy Bragg also lives in the constituency.
Conservative: 27,287 (47.6%)
Liberal Democrat: 23,364 (40.7%)
Labour: 3,815 (6.7%)
UKIP: 2,196 (3.8%)
Others: 675 (1.2%)
The map below shows the proposed changes to the other constituencies. As usual, the proposed boundaries are shown in black and the current ones in green. To get a closer look, click on the map and then click again once it opens in a new window.
Other than the four unchanged constituencies, there are five proposed seats that are wholly in Dorset, four wholly in Wiltshire and one that crosses the border. Below is a run-through of these, showing the projected 2010 result based on these proposed boundaries.
Dorset proposals
Moving eastward along the coast from West Dorset and South Dorset, you reach the Bournemouth-Poole-Christchurch conurbation, which produce four seats.
- Poole
Since this seat was created in 1950, it has always had Conservative MPs. This isn’t altogether surprising for a constituency that includes mega-rich Sandbanks Beach with some of the highest property values in the world. Despite this, the Tories haven’t managed to take 50% of the vote since 1992 and the Liberal Democrats currently hold 18 of the borough’s 42 councillors. Given the borough’s size, the seat has been smaller than the district since 1997 and the proposals see some eastern wards go to Bournemouth West whilst taking some northern wards back from Mid Dorset and North Poole, although the northernmost ward, Merley and Bearwood, stays outside the proposed constituency. The wards transferred to the Bournemouth seat are the Lib Dems’ most favourable ones, increasing the Tory lead in the proposed seat.
Conservative: 25,181 (50.4%)
Liberal Democrat: 15,458 (30.9%)
Labour: 5,330 (10.7%)
UKIP: 3,045 (6.1%)
Others: 933 (1.9%)
- Bournemouth West
This seat, which includes the town centre, was the cause of some speculation during the 2010 election campaign, when polls at one point showed that the Liberal Democrats might take it. In the end, they didn’t come particularly close, missing by 5,583 votes (13.4%). The boundary changes may give them some hope here: the proposals transfer in two good wards for the Lib Dems in from Poole, and a strongly Conservative one out to the other Bournemouth seat, making it far more marginal.
Conservative: 20,565 (41.6%)
Liberal Democrat: 17,894 (36.2%)
Labour: 6,950 (14.0%)
UKIP: 3,249 (6.6%)
Others: 825 (1.7%)
- Bournemouth East
The more Conservative of the two Bournemouth seats will become more so with the transfer in of Winton East ward from Bournemouth West. this ward was part of the constituency up to 2010, so should be relatively uncontroversial.
Conservative: 22,479 (47.9%)
Liberal Democrat: 14,462 (30.8%)
Labour: 6,424 (13.7%)
UKIP: 3,224 (6.9%)
Others: 311 (0.7%)
- Christchurch
Whilst the other three seats in the South East Dorset conurbation have always been Conservative-held, Christchurch was held by the Liberal Democrats for almost four years following Diana (now Baroness) Maddock’s victory in the 1993 by-election. Despite this, it is now the safest Tory seat in the conurbation. The constituency comprises the whole of the district of Christchurch together with part of the inland district of East Dorset around Ferndown and St. Leonard’s.
The proposals bring in the town of Verwood from that district, which is currently in the Dorset North constituency to bring the numbers up, but then removes three wards west of Ferndown to the proposed Blandford and Wimborne constituency. The over all impact on the Conservative lead will be slight.
Conservative: 29,361 (55.8%)
Liberal Democrat: 14,103 (26.8%)
Labour: 5,003 (9.5%)
UKIP: 4,075 (7.7%)
Others: 66 (0.1%)
- Blandford and Wimborne
Moving inland, we come to the Liberal Democrat-held constituency of Mid Dorset and North Poole, which they just retained last year with a majority of only 269 votes (0.6%) over the Conservatives. The seat takes in the northern fringe of the Bournemouth-Poole conurbation together with the market towns of Wimborne Minster and Wareham.
The constituency is currently the smallest in Dorset at 64,705 electors and the proposals also transfer three Poole wards to the seat of that name. To make up the numbers, two new areas are transferred in. First, the smaller element comes in from Christchurch (see above). The larger chunk comes from a third of the current North Dorset constituency comprising the town of Blandford Forum and the surrounding rural area. These changes are more than enough to eliminate that narrow majority.
Conservative: 27,719 (48.1%)
Liberal Democrat: 23,629 (41.0%)
Labour: 3,509 (6.1%)
UKIP: 2,487 (4.3%)
Others: 283 (0.5%)
The Dorset-Wiltshire seat
With the current North Dorset seat losing over half its electors to the Christchurch and Blanford and Wimborne constituencies, it is married up with parts of three Wiltshire constituencies, including half of the current South West Wiltshire seat.
- Warminster and Shaftesbury
As well as taking in the northern part of North Dorset, around the towns of Shaftesbury and Gillingham, this proposed seat includes the towns of Warminster and Westbury from South West Wiltshire and some rural areas from the Devizes and Salisbury constituencies. The largest part is from South West Wiltshire, which is a safe Conservative seat, and the other three seats are all Tory too. This should therefore be a pretty safely Conservative.
Conservative: 29,123 (51.9%)
Liberal Democrat: 17,729 (31.6%)
Labour: 4,402 (7.8%)
UKIP: 3,690 (6.6%)
Others: 1,196 (2.1%)
Wiltshire
Other than the Swindon seats and the northern part of Warminster and Shaftesbury there are four constituencies in Wiltshire. Taking them anti-clockwise from Warminster and Shaftesbury, these are:
- Salisbury
This current Conservative seat, covering the cathedral city, the town of Amesbury and Stonehenge faces relatively minor changes. It loses its north-west corner in the proposals and instead stretches north and south-west to form a backwards L-shaped seat. This takes in Durrington and Bulford Camp, just to the north of Amesbury, and the village of Tisbury which lies between Salisbury and Shaftesbury. The changes will make the seat slightly more Tory.
Conservative: 27,025 (50.4%)
Liberal Democrat: 19,670 (36.2%)
Labour: 4,357 (10.7%)
UKIP: 1,826 (3.4%)
Others: 1,483 (2.7%)
- Devizes
The current seat is based around the towns of Devizes and Marlborough and the surrounding rural areas. It is safely Conservative. The proposals move some rural areas to Salisbury and the Warminster and Shaftesbury seat, but bring in the town of Calne and the surrounding area from North Wiltshire. This should not change the balance too much, although the Liberal Democrats do have more support, and a councillor, in Calne. It will still be safely Conservative.
Conservative: 27,652 (54.0%)
Liberal Democrat: 15,007 (29.3%)
Labour: 4,739 (9.3%)
UKIP: 2,152 (4.2%)
Others: 1,629 (3.2%)
- Chippenham
Don’t be fooled by the name: this proposal is really a successor of the North Wiltshire seat rather than the current Lib Dem seat called ‘Chippenham’. North Wiltshire includes the towns of Calne, Malmesbury and (now Royal) Wootton Bassett and has a Tory majority of 7,483 (15.4%). The proposals remove Calne (to Devizes), a surrounding rural area and some rural area in the west around the pretty village of Box. In return, the town of Chippenham is added from the constituency of that name. Chippenham is a strong area for the Liberal Democrats, making the proposed seat a closer contest than North Wiltshire.
Conservative: 26,648 (48.5%)
Liberal Democrat: 21,362 (38.9%)
Labour: 3,920 (7.1%)
UKIP: 2,096 (3.8%)
Others: 869 (1.6%)
- Trowbridge
Whilst the town of Trowbridge is currently in the safe Conservative constituency of South West Wiltshire, most of this proposed constituency is in the Liberal Democrat seat of Chippenham, which they won on the seat’s creation last year. The parts of that seat that remain are around Melksham and Bradford-on-Avon. The village of Box comes in from North Wiltshire and a small rural area comes in from Devizes. Trowbridge itself has some Liberal Democrat wards, but is not as good for them as Chippenham. The proposals would therefore make this a Conservative marginal rather than a Lib Dem one.
Conservative: 24,578 (44.5%)
Liberal Democrat: 23,048 (41.7%)
Labour: 4,795 (8.7%)
UKIP: 1,655 (3.0%)
Others: 1,171 (2.1%)
Summary
The map below summarises the margins in each seat.
Despite the loss of a seat, the Conservatives end up a seat richer and would have won all the proposed constituencies in 2010. The proposals wipe out both of the Liberal Democrats’ seats in the two counties, although their position in Bournemouth West and North Wiltshire’s replacement make them more winnable. Labour’s position is unchanged, as the only seats that they are competitive in remain unaltered.
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