Ayr Carrick and Cumnock
2010 Results:
Conservative: 11721 (25.54%)
Labour: 21632 (47.14%)
Liberal Democrat: 4264 (9.29%)
SNP: 8276 (18.03%)
Majority: 9911 (21.6%)
2005 Results:
Labour: 20433 (45.4%)
Conservative: 10436 (23.2%)
Liberal Democrat: 6341 (14.1%)
SNP: 5932 (13.2%)
Other: 1906 (4.2%)
Majority: 9997 (22.2%)
Boundary changes prior to 2005 election: Name of seat changed from Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley.
2001 Result
Conservative: 7318 (18.2%)
Labour: 22174 (55.3%)
Liberal Democrat: 2932 (7.3%)
SNP: 6258 (15.6%)
Other: 1425 (3.6%)
Majority: 14856 (37%)
1997 Result
Conservative: 8336 (17%)
Labour: 29398 (59.8%)
Liberal Democrat: 2613 (5.3%)
SNP: 8190 (16.7%)
Referendum: 634 (1.3%)
Majority: 21062 (42.8%)
No Boundary Changes:
Profile:
Current MP: Sandra Osborne(Labour) (more information at They work for you)
William Grant (Conservative) Sandra Osborne(Labour) (more information at They work for you)James Taylor (Liberal Democrat)Charles Brodie (SNP)2001 Census Demographics
Total 2001 Population: 93131
Male: 47.7%
Female: 52.3%
Under 18: 22.2%
Over 60: 24.4%
Born outside UK: 2.2%
White: 99.4%
Asian: 0.2%
Other: 0.2%
Christian: 69.5%
Graduates 16-74: 16.6%
No Qualifications 16-74: 38.6%
Owner-Occupied: 63.4%
Social Housing: 27.3% (Council: 24.8%, Housing Ass.: 2.5%)
Privately Rented: 5.1%
Homes without central heating and/or private bathroom: 3.1%
A simple look at the boundary changes suggests that Cunninghame South was abolished before the last election. It didnt form the largest contributing share of any other seat and the majority of the new Ayrshire Central seat comes from Ayr, minus the town itself which joined a large segment of Carrick, Cumnock & Doon Valley. The probable overall effect of this was worse news for the Tories than Labour, in that they have been deprived of what should have been a none-too difficult gain in 2005 or 2009.
The changes also hurt them significantly (though by not quite as much) in Edinburgh South West, which used to Pentlands.
The boundary changes to the old Ayr constituency have saved Sandra Osborne’s bacon. The old seat was highly marginal in 2001 and was gained by the Tories in the Scottish Parliament by-election.
The only hope for the Tories in this new seat is probably a landslide victory, 1983-style.
As Muhammad Ali once said about Joe Frazier, (to paraphrase), “The Tories have 2 chances, slim and none.” The boundary change in Ayrshire shafted them completely, neatly distributing their best areas almost equally into 3 seats. The Cumnock area is one of Labour’s strongest anywhere in Scotland.
Yup, until the boundary changes again or unless there is huge anti-Labour swing (highly unlikely) this is going to be a Labour seat.
My prediction for this seat;
Labour 18500
Cons 13000
SNP 9000
Lib Dem 3500
Others 1500
Still no Conservative candidate here – whats going on???
One might ask, Matt, does your August prediction still stand in the circumstances?
I think Matt’s prediction looks pretty fair.
I’ve just percentaged it.
I would go for somewhat higher turnout, across all the parties.
The direct swing between Lab and C could be somewhat over-estimated, by about 1-1.5%, but this includes Ayr where the Tories have a base to improve from.
The SNP figure looks pretty spot on.
Lab 41.5 -3.9%
C 29.2 +6.0%
SNP 20.2 +7.0%
LD 7.9 -6.2%
Oths 3.4
Matt – a 10k majority is what’s going on
Tim13 – I would say roughly, yes. I don’t think this is a wildly optimistic prediction. I certainly cannot see Labour dropping below 40% and the Conservatives going above 30%, especially as they still don’t have a candidate in place.
If only we could have Ayr and Edinburgh Pentlands back…
The creation of ‘East Dunbartonshire’ was the only positive gain for the Tories in 2005.
This seat would have been ‘held’ by the Tories in 1987 and 1992 on its current boundaries but lost by a small margin in 1997.
The 2001 notional result clearly showed a Tory prospect (with them in a good third place), but this support collapsed in 2005 as many will have backed Swinson to vote Labour out.
To be honest, I wasn’t quite sure about how accurate the East Dunbartonshire notional result actually was – for example, the whole of Strathkelvin & Bearsden had 6600 or so Conservative votes, and Clydebank & Milngavie had around 3500 Conservative votes – the notional Conservative vote for this seat (which contains something like 80% of S & B and 20% of C & M, was 9300, which to me seems a bit high. I think the notional Lib Dem vote here also seemed a bit high.
I did an exercise where I reverse engineered the 2005 Scottish results back to the 2001 boundaries.
For Ayr, I came up with about Lab 39% to Con 34%.
This was based on ‘old’ Ayr having about 23,000 voters from AC&C where there was a notional swing 2001-2005 of 2.2% Lab to Con and 33,000 voters from Ayrshire Central (notional swing 0.6% Con to Lab).
I forget whose notional figures for 2001 I used.
Matt
Bournemouth West
To be honest, I wasn’t quite sure about how accurate the East Dunbartonshire notional result actually was – for example, the whole of Strathkelvin & Bearsden had 6600 or so Conservative votes, and Clydebank & Milngavie had around 3500 Conservative votes – the notional Conservative vote for this seat (which contains something like 80% of S & B and 20% of C & M, was 9300, which to me seems a bit high. I think the notional Lib Dem vote here also seemed a bit high.
November 12th, 2008 at 8:49 pm
——————————————–
ED did draw together the best Tory areas of three constituencies (not two as commonly believed).
Strathkelvin & Bearsden:
Bearsden and much of Bishopbriggs and West Kirkintilloch joined ED and are the more Tory part of this seat.
North Strathkelvin (the Strathclyde Regional Council ward which joined S & B in 1997 which includes Lennoxtown) is very Labour together with East Kirkintilloch.
Clydebank & Milngavie:
The Tories get virtually nothing in Clydebank (as evident in the new West Dunbartonshire seat), so almost all of C & Milngavie’s Tories were in Milngavie.
Monklands West/ Coatbridge & Cryston:
Don’t forget that ED also includes South Lenzies (a very Tory part of Strathkelvin) which was part of Monklands West/ Coatbridge & Cryston prior to 2005.
The Conservatives have at last selected a candidate – William Grant.
I think this is one where we could spring a surprise; perhaps not win it, but at least make it very marginal.
Labour – 15000
Conservative – 14000
SNP – 10000
LibDem – 4000
In percentage terms, that would be
Lab 34.8% -10.6%
Con 32.6% +9.4%
SNP 23.3% +10.1%
LD 9.3% -4.8%
total votes 43,000
That would be a large swing – a larger one than I would predict.
But I can picture it in certain credible circumstances, and will bow to more detailed knowledge.
Labour down 10.6% sounds steep.
If only Ayr was paired off with Troon and Prestwick rather than Carrick and Cumnock. Seems to me that these boundaries have been almost deliberately created to wipe out any chance of a Tory seat on this part of the west coast of Scotland.
Looking at the Scottish Boundaries, there is a suspicion that the Scottish Tories are not as hot on boundary changes and their political implications as the English Tories are
Shaun Bennet is quite right. Troon and Prestwick were tradionally part of Ayr and were the seat just Ayr and Carrick, then Labour would be struggling.
Cumnock in particular looks more towards Kilmarnock than Ayr.
This was in fact put forward as a counterproposal by the Tories, but it fell because an Ayr, Troon and Prestwick seat would have meant a seat consisting of Carrick, Cumnock, Doon Valley, Irvine Valley and three wards in southern Kilmarnock. The splitting of Kilmarnock was (IMO rightly) felt to be unnecessary. Also, not that it counts for a great deal, but I can’t think of anyone who would travel from Girvan to Kilmarnock without going through what would have been an Ayr/Troon/Prestwick seat, which perhaps indicates that the links between Carrick and Ayr are rather stronger than those between Carrick and Kilmarnock.
I think a Labour majority of about 4000 over the Conservatives is more likely (16000 to 12000).
Perhaps I am a little optimistic here. This seat is quite close to my constituency (Glasgow North West) and I know some of the activists from here as we have been campaigning together (in Glasgow South). I think we could surprise people here by doing better than expected. Remember that Labour are likely to become more and more unpopular towards 2010.
The boundary changes have more or less equally divided the Tory vote into three Ayrshire constituencies, Central Ayrshire, North Ayrshire & Arran and this one.
If the old Ayr seat (pre- 2005) had instead regained the more Tory areas it lost in 1997….which would have reached the current Scottish quota then this would have been a nailed on the wall Tory gain. The current boundaries are far more challenging.
For anyone that’s interested, the revised BCS proposals for Holyrood retain the Ayr seat and Carrick, Cumnock & Doon Valley seat, but with some tweaking of the boundary between them. The Ayr seat becomes the urban core of Troon, Prestwick and Ayr itself; CCDV loses its Ayr suburbs but gains Dundonald and Tarbolton.
I’ve not crunched any numbers yet but I would imagine that the net effect would be to improve the Tories’ position in Ayr over Labour by maybe about a thousand votes. It’s harder to know what the effect would be in CCDV because the areas moved in and out are Con/Lab whereas CCDV is a Lab/SNP fight.
I would be very interested in any notional results for these new seats – am very glad the provisional proposals which seemed to split Ayr in 2, have been usurped in favour of these new changes
I get Ayr to:
Con 13374
Lab 9911
SNP 9184
LD 1984
Others 124
CCDV I worked out as:
Lab 13152
SNP 9132
Con 5974
LD 1166
Others 809
Will,
As the 2007 Tory majority was 3,906 in Ayr, the boundary changes appear to weaken the Conservative position.
The loss of the South Ayr in 1997 turned Ayr into a notional Labour seat. As South Ayr is coming back in back in your figures suggest that the North Kyle rural wards (area to the East of Troon) which goes to CCDV is very Tory – even more Tory than South Ayr.
Thanks, Will. For those who voted in person (i.e. excluding postal votes), I’ve got:
Ayr
Con 10,351
Lab 7,866
SNP 7,651
LD 1,694
Oth 116
and CCDV
Lab 11,263
SNP 7,792
Con 4,408
LD 991
Oth 683
the figures for which look comparable to yours.
Peter, I make the figures for voters in person for the parts removed from Ayr as:
Con 1222, Lab 931, SNP 832, LD 161
and the parts coming in from CCDV as:
Con 2036, SNP 1906, Lab 1882, LD 401, Oth 116
Reasons for the unexpectedly low Con total:
a) CCDV is now a Lab-SNP marginal, or at least semi-marginal, so the Con vote was probably squeezed a bit;
b) the ex-CCDV territory doesn’t just include Con heartlands like Alloway and Doonfoot, but also solidly Labour areas such as Belmont and Kincaidston (the latter hasn’t been in the Ayr seat since before 1983, so it wouldn’t have had any effect on the 1997 notional).
I expect to see the LD’s and SNP swap places and a slightly reduced maj. for Lab.
Was Cumnock in Ayrshire South from 1885 to 1983?
The boundaries of Ayrshire are currently in a mess. As Harry Porter says Cumnock was in the old South Ayrshire for years but it would seem reasaonable to have tried to ensure that the Constituency Boundaries were nearlky the same as the Local Authorities-numbers permitting. Here we have Cumnock and the Doon Valley in the Constituency but for local Government terms part of East Ayrshire while Troon and Prestwick are part of South Ayrshire Council but part of Central Ayrshire constituency.
So it would be sensible that South Ayrshire Council (the smallest of the three Ayrshire authorities) should form the basis on one Constituency. Indeed to take it further Carrick and Doon probably can best be included with the southern part of Kilmarnock while the Northwrn part of Kilmarnock could be with the Garnock Valley and possibly Irvine new Town
Of course if the Conservatives win the election, and with an overall 10% reduction in the total number of UK MPs Ayrshire will be down to three and a half rather than four constituencies anyway
Lab Hold= 6,000 maj
Shaun, 6000 sounds about right, given that the Doon valley is some of Labour’s strongest territory in the whole of Scotland. I don’t think it would be much higher than that, though.
Ian, the ‘south Kilmarnock and Carrick’ option was suggested and rejected at the BCS’s enquiry. I take it you would have proposed the retention (and enlargement) of the whole Ayr seat? The only way that the numbers would have worked then would have been to have kept Ayrshire North and Arran roughly the same as it is, and create a seat based on Irvine, Stewarton and north Kilmarnock. But the question would then have to be asked: why split Kilmarnock in two, especially if a consequence of that were that southern Kilmarnock would end up in a seat with Ballantrae, with which it has few social ties (fewer, I imagine, than, say, Ayr and Cumnock, or Ayr and Dalmellington)?
On a related matter, if the number of constituencies were to be cut by 10%, where would Ayrshire lost its half-seat? Personally I’d go for the three Ayrshire councils and the three Renfrewshire councils having seven seats between them, with Gourock and Inverkip being added to Ayrshire North, but I realize that the BCS tends to work in mysterious ways.
LAB 5,000
Aiden- the solution with a 10% reduction in MPs of amalgamating Ayrshire and Renfrewshire has an elegant logic. The alternative of bringing Ayrshire in with Galloway would mean crossing the 1974-1994 Regional Boundaries which although redundant are still valid for joint boards such as the Police and Fire Service. There is also some sense in bring the Island of Bute back into the Ayrshire/Renfrewshire ambit
The Ayr declaration in 1992:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTiDY33WVvs&
Andrew Taylor is the Lib Dem candidate here
Ian, thanks for your kind comments about my suggestions for Ayrshire/Renfrewshire in the event of a 10% cut in the number of seats, though of course the devil would be in the detail. One wonders what the reaction would be if/when that particular scenario occurs. I recall that when the Holyrood seats had their boundaries changed recently there was a lot of opposition to crossing the historic Ayrshire/Renfrewshire county boundary, even though that would have resulted in evening up the numbers somewhat (e.g., through moving the Beith & Kilbirnie ward into whichever Renfrewshire seat contained Johnstone and Lochwinnoch). Would I be right in thinking that there’d be similar opposition in the event of a cross-county seat?
I agree with you about Ayrshire and D&G not being linked, but am less convinced by the point about Bute, partly because it’s now been linked with Argyll for almost thirty years, and partly because Bute is a compact and, for Argyll & Bute, relatively densely populated area; if it were removed, in order to make up the numbers, it would probably have to replaced by somewhere much more far flung, and that would make the seat harder to represent effectively. (I holidayed in one such area, Ardnamurchan, last summer, and while it’s a beautiful part of the world, it takes a good couple of hours to get from one end of the ward to the other – and that’s just on the mainland!)
Labour 17500
SCUP 14300
SNP 8000
LD 3800
Oth 1500
Matt:
On LibdemsDOTorgDOTuk site LD PPC is showing as James Taylor. Also James on Wikki.
BBC haven’t caught up yet.
Aiden,
as you say the devil will be in the detail but that will be everywhere with sitting MPs often of the same Party fighting below the surface against each other to protect their majority or indeed their existence. Taking your point about Argyll that if the Tory proposal about equality of constituency size and a reduction of 10% in the total number of constituencies comes about, that means each constituency would have an electorate of say 90,000. The Highlands, the Western Isles, Orkney and Shetland would be about three or four constituencies in total instead of six. Bute’s 7,000 electors would be small in the scheme of things. Where Ayrshire is concerned it means three and a half rather than four seats and a unit of Renfrewshire/Ayrshire looks the only option. Remember last time the commission agreed a crossing of the West Lothian/Stirlingshire boundaries to create Linlithgow and Falkirk East.Indeed that even crossed the old boundares of Central and Lothian Regions
I have said elsewhere about my thoughts on Bute but for most Islanders their route off the Island is via Wemyss Bay. There are two large near new ferries on the route. The alternative route via Argyll is a glorifed “landing craft ” from Colintraive to Rhubodach. Other organisations is the island look to the Renfrew/Ayrshire mainland rather than Glasgow
A BC might come to different conclusions on the building blocks on an Ayrshire/Renfrewshire grouping.
If one starts in the south from say Ballantrae, it is possible to keep much of South Ayrshire Council area in the same seat but East and North Ayrshire can now only justify two and half seats. To bring uo that “half seat”, the Skelmorlie/Weymss Bay strip through to Gourock could be added to a revised North Ayshire for a start as could the Renfrewshire South Part of Paisley such as Johnstone and Kilbarchan with two seats being created from the Paisley Greenock coastal strip
Ayrshire could also be twinned with Dumfries & Galloway so that a ‘Dumfries & Dumfriesshire’ constituency was created and Galloway could form a seat with Carrick.
Currently Dumfrieshire includes parts of South Lanarkshire and Scottish Borders (Peebleshire)
Presumeably were the current MP to deal with a matter of policing, he would have to deal with three different Police Forces.
For information the original proposals for Scottish Local Govvernment in the early 1970s envisaged Girvan and Ballantrae part of Galloway but local opinion was strongly against and the area remained in Strathclyde/Kyle & Carrick
If there’s a 10% reduction in the number of seats then the electoral quota would presumably be raised from 70,000 (or thereabouts) to 77,000-78,000, not 90,000. I’d say that anything within 10% either way would probably be regarded as ‘in play’, though the question of what to do with the Highlands and Islands would have to be resolved again. Although I’m not a fan of pairing the islands with the mainland as things currently stand, I could certainly see a point where seats based on Caithness/Sutherland/Orkney/ Shetland and Ross/Skye/Lochaber/Eilean Siar were created.
I think there will necessarily have to be a lot of cross-authority/cross-county/cross-old-region seats in order to make the numbers work. Regarding Bute specifically: point taken about the ferry; it seems astonishing that there isn’t a direct ferry from the Cowal peninsula, given the local government arrangements. Wemyss Bay, of course, is in Inverclyde, but would be in an Ayrshire North & Gourock cross-county seat were one to be created. The sort of seven-seat solution I had in mind was something like:
1) Ayr, Carrick & Cumnock: three Ayr wards, Maybole/N Carrick, Girvan/S Carrick, Cumnock, New Cumnock
2) Kilmarnock & Loudoun: rest of East Ayrshire (Kilmarnock, Stewarton, Irvine Valley, Mauchline, Muirkirk)
3) Ayrshire Central: Troon, Prestwick, Kyle, two Irvine wards, Kilwinning
4) Ayrshire North & Gourock: Stevenston, Saltcoats, Ardrossan, Largs, Arran and Cumbraes, Wemyss Bay, Inverkip, Gourock
5) Renfrewshire North: Greenock, Port Glasgow, Kilmacolm, Bridge of Weir, Bishopton, Erskine, Houston, Linwood
6) Renfrewshire East: current East Renfrewshire, minus Barrhead, plus Johnstone, Kilbarchan and Lochwinnoch
7) Paisley and Barrhead: Paisley, Renfrew, Ralston, Barrhead
Labour
Conservative
SNP
Libdem
Majority – 5000
Lab hold maj 8000
Lab Hold
Maj 7900
Lab maj 7,000