From the category archives:

Boundary changes / Elections

Election round-up: the local elections

May 11, 2012

It’s been hard work keeping up with all the elections over the weekend: London, France, Greece (the latter now updated with charts and map).  So apologies for taking time to get around to the non-London local elections in the UK. The scope of the elections in England this time was not as broad as in [...]

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Greece: The Election and Its Aftermath

May 8, 2012

Sunday’s joy at the election of Francois Hollande is tempered with the knowledge that the results of the election in Greece are likely to have a far more immediate and profound effect than those in France.    I wrote last week that the polls pointed to a potentially seismic election result, as the voters were likely [...]

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Magnifique!

May 7, 2012

Congratulations, France.  The result might have been tighter than the polls suggested, but Francois Hollande‘s victory yesterday gives new hope to the left in Europe. The writing was clearly on the wall when George Osborne spun on the Andrew Marr show yesterday that Hollande was in favour of austerity, and drew a distinction between this [...]

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London Election Round-Up

May 6, 2012

There are a lot of elections to digest this weekend: not only the London elections and the local government elections in Scotland, Wales and a number of English authorities, but also the French, Greek and Serbian elections being held today. But first, London.  The one ray of sunshine for Cameron on a dismal night for the [...]

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London elections part 2: the Assembly

May 2, 2012

Following on from my post earlier this week on the London mayoral race, I am turning to the other part of the GLA elections, for the 25 assembly members.  The map below shows the state of play in 2008 for the 14 constituency members, with the 11 top-up list members shown on the right-hand side. [...]

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Is Boris Really Coasting To Victory?

April 30, 2012

According to the most recent polls, the damage the government is doing to itself is not playing out in the London elections.  Today Populus published a poll showing Boris Johnson 12 points ahead of Ken Livingstone on both the first and second rounds.  That is double Boris’ winning margin in 2008 in the second round. [...]

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France: good start, but not all over yet

April 23, 2012

We now know that 6 May’s second round runoff for the French presidency will between Francois Hollande (aka Monsieur Normal/ Monsieur Flanby) and Nicholas Sarkozy.  For the first time in French presidential elections, the incumbent finished second in the first round, with Sarkozy half a million votes behind Hollande.  The only previous incumbent to lose, [...]

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A Glance Forward to November’s Presidential Election

April 16, 2012

Now that the Republican nomination has been sewn up, if not confirmed, we are turning our attention to how the November presidential election itself will turn out.  As a reminder, the map below shows the 2008 result, with the numbers indicating the electoral college votes garnered by Barack Obama and John McCain. Just to recap [...]

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Welsh Boundary Changes Part 3: South East Wales

April 13, 2012

For our final post on the proposed Parliamentary constituency boundaries in Wales, we turn to South East Wales, stretching from the Rhondda and Vale of Glamorgan in the west to the River Wye in the east, taking in the preserved counties of Gwent, South Glamorgan and most of Mid Glamorgan (with the exception of Bridgend [...]

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Welsh Boundary Changes Part 2: South West Wales

April 10, 2012

For the second of our posts on the boundary proposals for Wales, we are taking a look at the south-western third of the principality, covering the preserved counties of Dyfed and West Glamorgan together with Bridgend County Borough (which was in Mid-Glamorgan).  This might seem a slightly arbitrary split, but given the number of proposals [...]

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Welsh Boundary Changes Part 1: North and Central Wales

April 9, 2012

With all the excitement of the US primaries, it has been a while since we have posted on the impact of the Boundary Commission’s proposals for the reduced number of constituencies that will be fought over at the next General Election.  So to continue the series we are returning to Wales: we speculated about North [...]

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Hard Cheese for Santorum in Wisconsin

April 5, 2012

Tuesday’s primaries in Maryland, Wisconsin and the District of Columbia (Washington DC to you and me) amounted to a knock out blow delivered by Mitt Romney to his opponents.  It is now 99% sure (i.e. basically certain barring an unlikely previously unknown devastating revelation from Romney’s past) that he will secure the Republican nomination. Of [...]

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So What Happened At Bradford West?

March 30, 2012

I’ve always been a great fan of Alan Hansen’s football punditry: usually the most inciteful analysis together with a generous dose of Scottish dourness.  But of course his most famous moment was when he got it wrong: “You can’t win anything with kids”. As Ray North pointed out, I’ve had my own Alan Hansen moment [...]

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By-Election Special: Bradford West

March 28, 2012

Although there has been less than overwhelming coverage of it, this Thursday sees a Parliamentary by-election in Bradford West, caused by the ill health of its Labour MP Marsha Singh. This is the seventh by-election of this Parliament, and the sixth in a Labour-held seat (the seventh was in Sinn Fein’s Belfast West seat) – [...]

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Santorum’s Louisiana Victory Shows It Isn’t Over Yet

March 25, 2012

That isn’t to say that Mitt Romney’s eventual victory is in doubt: his victory in Illinois earlier this week pretty much sealed the deal on that.  However, the scale of Rick Santorum’s victory in yesterday’s primary in the Pelican State does show that the race will carry on and that Romney needs to continue with [...]

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Santorum Illinoised by His Poor Result?

March 21, 2012

Well, he should be. As the chart below shows, Mitt Romney comfortably beat Rick Santorum, by a margin of almost 12 percent in Illinois yesterday.  Indeed, Romney was not far of hitting 50% of the votes cast. This was an election that Santorum really needed to win if he was to close the gap in [...]

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Santorum’s Boost from the Deep South

March 14, 2012

On Sunday, I mused whether any post-Kansas boost to Rick Santorum’s chances would be enough to propel him from third place to winner in yesterday’s primaries in Alabama and Mississippi, or whether it might just erode Gingrich’s narrow poll lead to give the victories to Romney. We now know the answer: Santorum won in both [...]

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Santorum Romps To Victory in Kansas

March 11, 2012

If Mitt Romney had hoped that he was now a shoe-in for the Republican nomination following Super Tuesday, Republicans in Kansas have other ideas. In yesterday’s caucus, he took a paltry 21% and his leading rival Rick Santorum wiped the floor with him, taking a massive 52% of the vote. The chart below summarises the [...]

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Super Tuesday round-up

March 7, 2012

So, Romney won six out of ten states in Super Tuesday, one less than we predicted earlier this week. He picked up the lion’s share of the delegates: 220 of the 419 on offer.  It is worth pointing out that his figures were inflated significantly in two states though: not having either Gingrich or Santorum [...]

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All That’s Left’s Guide To Super Tuesday

March 5, 2012

In my last post, I pointed out that Saturday’s result in Washington state was good news for Mitt Romney in the run-up to tomorrow’s Super Tuesday contest. Super Tuesday this time around is a bit less ‘super’ than in previous years, in particular 2008 when 41% of all the Republican delegates were up for grabs [...]

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Romney’s Easy Win in Washington Sets Scene for Super Tuesday

March 5, 2012

As you might have seen, Romney won the Washington state primary caucus on Saturday. That win is no great surprise, although Ron Paul fought hard in an attempt to win his first state.  He missed by a fair margin, and by a lot more than he did in Maine. The pie chart below shows how [...]

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Romney Pulls Ahead – But A Long Way To Go

March 2, 2012

Mitt Romney needs 1,144 delegates at August’s Republican Convention in Tampa (I pity the great bars of Tampa’s Ybor City having to face such an onslaught) to win his party’s nomination.  As of this week, he has 182 delegates to the 156 delegates amassed by his remaining opponents.  Slowly but relatively surely, he appears to [...]

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Chasm Closing in the Grand Canyon State

February 22, 2012

In my previous post, I explained that Michigan was probably the more interesting of the two primaries being fought by the Republicans next Tuesday. But it is worth stressing that word ‘probably’.  A week ago, Santorum was well ahead in Michigan whilst Romney was even further ahead in Arizona.  Yet just as the race in [...]

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Taking a Gander at the Michiganders’ Primary

February 22, 2012

We are less than a week away from the next tests in the Republican primary race.  Tuesday sees primary elections in two sizable states: Arizona and Michigan. Both are also potentially swing states in November, although at the moment you would favour the Republicans in Arizona and the Democrats in the Great Lakes State. Of [...]

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East Midlands Boundary Changes Part 5: Derbyshire

February 16, 2012

For the final part in this series looking at the proposed parliamentary boundary changes in the East Midlands (see these links for the posts on Northamptonshire, Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire) we turn to without doubt the most attractive of the region’s counties: Derbyshire.  Unlike say Lincolnshire, it is a county that is very much influenced [...]

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Romney Squeaks It in Maine

February 12, 2012

In the final Republican primary contest of a busy week, Mitt Romney managed to squeak a win in Maine, a state he won in 2008 by a 31 point margin.  That margin shrank to 3% yesterday, a paltry 194 votes after 95% of the results have been counted. Romney’s share of the vote was 52% [...]

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East Midlands Boundary Changes Part 4: Lincolnshire

February 10, 2012

We’ve previously blogged on the proposed constituency boundary changes in Northamptonshire, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire.  For the fourth in the series on the East Midlands proposals, we turn to the region’s largest county in area, Lincolnshire.  Below is a map showing the state of play after the last General Election. The current pattern of constituencies dates [...]

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Romney’s Nightmare Tuesday

February 10, 2012

Regular readers will have noted that I predicted an easy run for Mitt Romney between the Florida primary and Super Tuesday.  Well, what do I know? We now know that Republican supporters in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri had very different ideas, with Rick Santorum winning all three contests on Tuesday.  It looks as if the [...]

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Romney’s Win In Nevada Shows An Enthusiasm Deficit

February 6, 2012

To no-one’s surprise, Mitt Romney easily won Saturday’s primary caucus in Nevada. It would be churlish not to point out that the victory was overwhelming, taking 50% of the vote and a 29% lead over the second-placed Newt Gingrich.  Nevada confirmed that Romney is almost certain to be the Republican candidate in November.  The results [...]

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East Midlands Boundary changes Part 3: Nottinghamshire

February 6, 2012

I’ve already posted on the Boundary Commission’s proposals for the constituency boundaries in Northamptonshire and Leicestershire. In the latter case, a new constituency will cross the boundary into Nottinghamshire. Before explaining the impact of that, let’s have a look at the current state of play. That constituency crossing the county boundary is Coalville and Keyworth, [...]

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