Barrow and Furness
2010 Results:
Conservative: 16018 (36.3%)
Labour: 21226 (48.11%)
Liberal Democrat: 4424 (10.03%)
BNP: 840 (1.9%)
UKIP: 841 (1.91%)
Green: 530 (1.2%)
Independent: 245 (0.56%)
Majority: 5208 (11.81%)
Notional 2005 Results:
Labour: 17505 (45.1%)
Conservative: 12669 (32.7%)
Liberal Democrat: 6907 (17.8%)
Other: 1721 (4.4%)
Majority: 4836 (12.5%)
Actual 2005 result
Conservative: 11323 (31%)
Labour: 17360 (47.6%)
Liberal Democrat: 6130 (16.8%)
UKIP: 758 (2.1%)
Other: 922 (2.5%)
Majority: 6037 (16.5%)
2001 Result
Conservative: 11835 (30.3%)
Labour: 21724 (55.7%)
Liberal Democrat: 4750 (12.2%)
UKIP: 711 (1.8%)
Majority: 9889 (25.3%)
1997 Result
Conservative: 13133 (27.2%)
Labour: 27630 (57.3%)
Liberal Democrat: 4264 (8.8%)
Referendum: 1208 (2.5%)
Other: 1995 (4.1%)
Majority: 14497 (30.1%)
Boundary changes: gains Brougton and part of the Crake Valley from Westmorland & Lonsdale.
Profile:
Current MP: John Woodcock (Labour) Advisor to Gordon Brown, former Special Advisor to John Hutton.
John Gough (Conservative) John Woodcock (Labour) Advisor to Gordon Brown, former Special Advisor to John Hutton.
Barry Rabone (Liberal Democrat) born 1947, Croydon. Educated at Falmouth Grammar and Cardiff College of Educatation. Schoolteacher. Contested Barrow and Furness 2005 and 2001.
Chris Loynes (Green)
John Smith (UKIP)Mike Ashburner (BNP)Brian Greaves (Independent)2001 Census Demographics
Total 2001 Population: 91694
Male: 48.8%
Female: 51.2%
Under 18: 22.8%
Over 60: 23%
Born outside UK: 2.3%
White: 99.2%
Asian: 0.2%
Mixed: 0.3%
Other: 0.2%
Christian: 80.8%
Full time students: 1.8%
Graduates 16-74: 15.6%
No Qualifications 16-74: 31.1%
Owner-Occupied: 77%
Social Housing: 11.7% (Council: 9.8%, Housing Ass.: 1.9%)
Privately Rented: 8.2%
Homes without central heating and/or private bathroom: 23.6%
Labour ructions over attempt to parachute in a No 10 spin doctor (Jonathan Woodcock) as candidate here;
http://www.labourhome.org/forum/?p=7313
Interesting selection going on here for Labour. Murmurs of bias and parachuting from disgruntled party members in regards to John Woodcock – previously an officer within Labour Students, then John Hutton’s special advisor and now one of Gordon Brown’s press officers – who is seeking the nomination here.
I just posted on that about 20 mins ago – awaiting moderation as I attached the link to Labourhome
Labour needs to have clear and open criteria as to when they will invoke an All Women Selection if the process is not to be seen as open to backroom manipulation. It’s a bit late now, though.
In any case, unless the national state of public opinion changes drastically, the Labour candidate here stands little chance.
Presumably the local issue will be the replacement of the Trident fleet. However, this appears to be a standoff as all the parties appear to recognise that the UK could not afford it. And one may comment that if we had not bought Trident in the 1980s the UK could have used the money to preserve a sound industrial base, the loss of which has helped bring the country to its current mess.
Presumably there will be local debate about which party will best encourage industry to replace submarine building. But it is effectively impossible these days to convert naval shipyards to build merchant ships.
Just found some more info on Mr Woodcock – didn’t realise he was only 30!
http://www.nwemail.co.uk/home/columns_2_4887/inside_the_mind_of_john_woodcock_1_610998?referrerPath=home
The politics home survey is showing a very low swing in Cumbria which would seem Labour holding all their seats in the county. I’d be interested to know if this fit in with local election results in this seat for example?
Andy
The June CC results by constituency as calculated by Pete Whitehead:
Barrow
Con 39.8
Lab 23.3
LD 12.7
swing 14.5%
Carlisle
Con 37.1
Lab 30.8
LD 15.1
swing 8.5%
Copeland
Con 40.5
Lab 33.5
LD 7.0
swing 12.3%
Workington
Con 37.1
Lab 34.8
LD 10.4
swing 8.9%
I think though that there is a doubt as to the notional results for Copeland and Workington.
All together much stronger swings than the marginals poll indicated.
Woodcock was one of the villains in a film called ‘Slave Labour’ about how the Labour Party rips off media workers. Highly recommended.
Much of the discrepancy will be down to the lower turnout by Labour voters in local elections . It would be more meaningful for you to compare the swing from the 2004 local amd 2009 CC elections .
When do Labour select here?
More unrest at Labour’s selection procedure here;
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/oct/11/labour-selection-parachute-candidates-row
The story keeps on running;
http://www.labourhome.org/?p=7875
Jonathan Woodcock has won the Labour selection, by a massive margin:
102 Jonathan Woodcock
22 Mark MacDonald
5 – Saj Malik
3 – Cat Smith
54 votes were cast by post…
I’m slightly confused about how much of swing is needed here for the Tories to win – Electoral Calculus clearly thinks this is a lot more marginal.
Why the difference?
Does anyone know if the Socialist Pople’s Party are standing again?
Ladbrokes:
Conservatives 8/13
Labour 6/5
Liberal Democrats 100/1
Tam – I think EC uses a bizarre set of maths based on a national uniform swing.
There could be two reasons for the difference – one is the projected boundary changes, I’d have to check but they may have the majority lower than here
The second, as Doktorb says, is that EC uses “proportional” national swing, rather than “uniform”, as used here (essentially EC projects that if Labour are on 27% cf 36% last time, they will lose roughly a quarter of their support in every seat – UNS says they’ll fall by 9% in every seat). The proportional model was responsible for Ming’s Lib Dems being projected zero seats on EC when they were polling at 11% as they lost more than half their support across the board
Chris Loynes is Green Party Candidate
Paul – Thanks for that.
So which is more accurate (sorry Anthony)?
EC’s model has a tendency to wildly distort large swings while being not too different from a standard model on small swings. I would trust the standard model–with the caveat that UNS models are always highly fallible.
Anyway, did the People’s Party stand here last time? I don’t think they did. If they stand this time, that could cause serious trouble for Labour, who are already in trouble here to begin with.
I don’t know about EC but I didn’t think the figure above was based on any kind of swing, it’s a calculation of what the result would have been had this seat been fought on these boundaries in 2005.
It’s quite an interesting to look at the wards transferred into the seat. This is a L/C marginal and the Westmoorland is a LD/C marginal. The two wards have lots of C and LD voters and v few L.
It will therefore be interesting to see what the LD supporters do when faced with the new experience of a C/L marginal – I’d have though it would be v difficult to model.
Do many of the Royal Navy sailors, submariners and Marines register to vote here or at home?
BBC has just reported 230 job losses at BAE systems Submarine yard in the town.
Thank you JamesS for your infornmation dated 31 December. It may be that such LD voters vote LD in Barrow as they did in W&L which I have predicted as LD hold.
Barrow is too close to predict at this point; it could be that as John Hutton standing down AND favourable boundary changes helping, Tories narrowly gain.
3 figure Lab or Tory majority, I feel.
Lab Hold= 1,000 maj
CON 3000
C gain maj 3000
What is the opinion in Barrow about building a New series of Nuclear submarines?
Lab Hold
Maj 1300
Con maj 1,000
LAB HOLD. Just.
What a remarkably good result this was for Labour. Can anyone explain it?
I met some people from Barrow recently who weren’t Labour voters (they said they’d vote Green) and they said that everyone recognised what a stonkingly good candidate John Woodcock was and how he’d been out on the doorstep literally everywhere – even in the remote “Tory” villages. They reported receiving several “while you were out” cards from him.
I also think that Cleggmania will have backfired here – ie. because the Lib Dems looked like a real threat – but nobody knew where they were making advances, the main parties were forced to give reasons not to vote Lib Dem – which in Barrow means making it clear that the Lib Dems are anti-Trident and anti-nuclear new build. Normally the main parties wouldn’t have needed to have even mentioned the Lib Dems meaning that some Barrow voters might previously have voted for them in blissful ignorance of their policies in these areas.
John Woodcock would also have been the beneficiary of Lib Dem voters who had previously voted for Tim Farron but were now in the Barrow constituency due to boundary changes.
Some of those Lib Dem voters would have included:
a) anti-Tory tactical votes returning to their “natural” home.
b) the non-political who can recognise someone who has the potential of being an outstandingly hard-working constituency MP.
Barnaby JL Marder – you’re right. I thought Labour would be toast here.
Would Labour have won here if John Hutton had stood again?
I’m not at all surprised Labour held on here. After all, 1980s aside, this is usually a Labour seat. And Labour hadn’t handicapped itself as in the 80s with its unilateralist stance.
Having said that, I was quite surprised the Labour majority remained as high as 5,000.
The Tory share of the vote here is almost identical 2001 – 2010 as the national figure.
It seems Labour has done very well here for the type of seat.
Perhaps the Trident thing actually plays in their favour now – although I’d guess that is neutral.
84.4% for the two main parties here.
which could have been the biggest.
I’m fairly sure this was the biggest as discussed on the Warks N thread.
Labour will gain Ulverston Town and possibly Ulverston C from the tories this year.