Some graphs from the 2017 UK General Election

This post just contains lots of graphs that I have made that go some way to showing what happened in the last week’s UK General Election.

I’m not trying to give any particular analysis myself, or look at any particular demographic underpinnings. If that’s your bag, there’s plenty out there, for example from the FT’s John Burn-Murdoch https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/873011056553201664 or @YouGov https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/874670932618612736

The graphs below are just looking at Constituencies electorally, with the 2015 and 2017 results, as well as Chris Hanretty’s excellent estimated EU Referendum results by constituency (https://medium.com/@chrishanretty/revised-estimates-of-leave-vote-share-in-westminster-constituencies-c4612f06319d)

There may be some errors in the data as I cobbled my spreadsheets together fairly haphazardly after the election. But full results are now available through The Commons library here http://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/CBP-7979 and results from 2015 can be found here: http://www.britishelectionstudy.com/news-category/2015-general-election/

The overall results

Across Great Britain, the results showed a return to two-party dominance, with both the Conservatives and Labour growing their share of the vote by a large amount since the 2015 Election, and every other party’s vote share shrinking. Most dramatically was the fall in the UKIP vote, from about 3.8 million to 590,000.

London was the only place in the UK where the Conservative share of the vote decreased this year, and the only place where the Liberal Democrats increased their vote.

Scotland saw a dramatic fall in the vote for the Scottish National Party, with a small increase for Labour and a massive swing towards Ruth Davidson’s Conservatives across the board.

Target Seats

Theresa May called the Election with the aim of increasing her majority. Unfortunately for her, that didn’t happen. Below, you will see what happened in the 50 Labour constituencies that the Tories were closest to winning in 2015. In only six of them did they manage to gain the seat from Labour. In several other potential Tory targets — most noticeably Hove — Labour actually dramatically increased its majority.

For the Labour party on the other hand, few gains were expected. But the party made unexpected and significant inroads into it’s Tory-held targets. Indeed, its most shocking gains- Canterbury and Kensington — would have been 87th and 97th on this list!

The collapse of UKIP, the decline of the SNP in Scotland, the two-party squeeze and the growth of Labour in London and the South East leaves us with a very different set of marginal seats after the 2017 Election.

The Conservatives fell narrowly short of an overall majority, and would only need to win 9 more seats in order to do so. In fact, they would only need 1052 voters in Kensington, Barrow and Furness, Crewe and Nantwich, Lanark and Hamilton East, Perth and North Perthshire, Canterbury, Dudley North, Newcastle-under-Lyme, and Keighley to vote Conservative, and they would do so.

Labour on the other hand are still a way off an overall majority, but would be hopeful about winning some of these seats whenever the next general election may be.

Majorities and Swings

The apparent return to two-party politics saw both main parties rack up some massive majorities in their safest seats. Theresa May’s seat of Maidenhead is the 2nd safest Conservative seat in the country in terms of number of votes. Labour’s safest seats are now all very urban seats, including new Mother of the House Harriet Harman’s constituency of Camberwell and Peckham.

The areas that saw the biggest increase in the Conservative vote were nearly all in Scotland. However they made big gains in some Labour-held remain areas, like Stoke-on-Trent and Walsall — however not enough to flip the seat.

Labour too made some extraordinary gains in the south and south-west where they were not expected to — Thangam Debbonaire’s result in Bristol West was unique — and a continuation of this trend could see more success in the future.

The combined vote for the main two British parties increased in every seat in Great Britain but 12. Richmond Park is a slight anomaly given the by-election last year, but these areas are all areas that mostly supported staying in the EU, and were targeted by the Liberal Democrats and/or Green Party.

The EU Referendum and UKIP

The following show how the party’s increased or decreased their vote depending how the (estimated) results of the EU Referendum of 2016 were in each constituency. Labour’s is almost entirely uncorrelated — it’s biggest gain was in a very Remain area, but it also lost votes to the Lib Dems in other remain areas. Similarly, they made big gains in some Brexit areas, like Portsmouth South and Cornwall.

For the Conservatives, the pattern is clearer: they generally increased their vote more in areas that voted more strongly to leave the EU — and gaining the Labour seat of Mansfield is a prime example. Their biggest losses were all in London seats which votes heavily for remain.

For the Liberal Democrats — the natural party for firm Remainers — it was again a mixed bag. Their biggest gains were in Remain areas (although their by-election victory over Zac Goldsmith was undone) and they did well in areas they clearly targeted their pro-EU message.

The UKIP vote collapsed everywhere. There was not a single seat in which UKIP stood candidates in both 2015 and 2017 where they did better this time around. Their best peformance was in Thurrock, this time picking up just over 20% of the vote (still down more than 10%), and only in Hartlepool did they also get more than 10% of votes this time around.

If you like the graphs, please feel free to share the individual images on social media or wherever else, as long as you credit me and/or link to this post!