Bedford
2010 Results:
Conservative: 17546 (38.9%)
Labour: 16193 (35.9%)
Liberal Democrat: 8957 (19.86%)
BNP: 757 (1.68%)
UKIP: 1136 (2.52%)
Green: 393 (0.87%)
Independent: 120 (0.27%)
Majority: 1353 (3%)
Notional 2005 Results:
Labour: 17696 (41.7%)
Conservative: 14220 (33.5%)
Liberal Democrat: 9244 (21.8%)
Other: 1314 (3.1%)
Majority: 3476 (8.2%)
Actual 2005 result
Conservative: 14174 (33.7%)
Labour: 17557 (41.7%)
Liberal Democrat: 9063 (21.5%)
UKIP: 995 (2.4%)
Other: 283 (0.7%)
Majority: 3383 (8%)
2001 Result
Conservative: 13297 (32.8%)
Labour: 19454 (47.9%)
Liberal Democrat: 6425 (15.8%)
UKIP: 430 (1.1%)
Other: 973 (2.4%)
Majority: 6157 (15.2%)
1997 Result
Conservative: 16474 (33.7%)
Labour: 24774 (50.6%)
Liberal Democrat: 6044 (12.3%)
Referendum: 1503 (3.1%)
Other: 149 (0.3%)
Majority: 8300 (17%)
Boundary changes: Very minor – Bedford gains small parts of Goldington ward and Kingsbrook from Bedfordshire North East and a handful of voters in Kempston South.
Profile: A diverse town, Bedford has a large population of Italian descent and also has a large Asian population. The constituency is drawn tightly around Bedford and the adjacent town of Kempston. Bedford Hospital is threatened with being downgraded as part of NHS re-organisation in the area and its future is an important local issue.
Current MP: Richard Fuller (Conservative) Born Bedford. Educated at Bedford Modern and Oxford University. Has worked as a venture capitalist and management consultant. Contested Bedford 2005.
Richard Fuller (Conservative) Born Bedford. Educated at Bedford Modern and Oxford University. Has worked as a venture capitalist and management consultant. Contested Bedford 2005.Patrick Hall (Labour) born 1951. Educated at Bedford Modern School and the University of Birmingham. Worked as a planning officer for Bedford council prior to his election (more information at They work for you)Henry Vann (Liberal Democrat) Born Bedford. Works for the professional association of musicians.Ben Foley (Green) Born 1966. Educated at Newcastle, York and Cardiff Universities. Senior Research Fellow at De Montfort University. Contested Mid Bedfordshire, 2005.Mark Adkin (UKIP)William Dewick (BNP)Samrat Bhandari (Independent)2001 Census Demographics
Total 2001 Population: 98424
Male: 49.4%
Female: 50.6%
Under 18: 23.7%
Over 60: 18.7%
Born outside UK: 15.5%
White: 82.1%
Black: 3.6%
Asian: 10.9%
Mixed: 2.5%
Other: 0.9%
Christian: 64.8%
Hindu: 2.4%
Muslim: 4.7%
Sikh: 2.5%
Full time students: 5.5%
Graduates 16-74: 20.5%
No Qualifications 16-74: 27.3%
Owner-Occupied: 67.4%
Social Housing: 19.2% (Council: 1.8%, Housing Ass.: 17.4%)
Privately Rented: 10.5%
Homes without central heating and/or private bathroom: 5.8%
Completely confused. I want to keep the Tories out -The Independent On Sunday and Mirror say vote Labour in this seat. But the bookies point to a Lib Dem tactical vote. Any ideas?
In the current electoral climate I’d say vote for the Lib Dem… but then I would wouldn’t I ?.
There are no guarantees.
Even Mike Smithson of PB.com who lives here isn’t able to make a good guess so I think you’re going to have to make your own mind up here Eamonn.
I’m in Queens Park so if posters/signs are anything to go by the Labour vote should hold up in this part of Bedford. It seemed to during the council elections. Patrick Hall seems a decent MP with the dealings I had with him. Not sure why the Lib Dems changed their candidate – I wonder if his youth will count against him? Still undecided. Heart says Labour – Bookies, sorry, Head says Lib Dem. I usually vote bang on 7am but may well wait until later on. Are any rumours on how it is going on the ground on election day allowed on this site?
I’m guessing that nothing that could be construed as an exit poll would be legal.
Bookies odds rather than rumors are usually a better way to judge whats really going on in a particular seat.
After all while most people will try and push their own party, it become s a bit More difficult when cold hard cash is on the line
That said, this is one seat I won’t be venturing any of the aforesaid hard cash.
Betting odds and cricket are 2 things I’ve never understood. Is there a website to explain odds, and how to compare them ?.
Eamonn,
The bookies don’t point to anything. They offer the lowest odds for each candidate that they can and still attract bets for them. Thus their odds only indicate the relative willingness of people to bet sums of money on potential winners.
As I said upthread, the odds are much distorted by LD backers in other parts of the country betting on an LD win when they didn’t realise that Bedford and Kempston constituency excludes good LD areas within the Borough like Wootton and Harrold (as well as good Tory areas).
LDs have also traditionally been the most willing to bet on their party, so LDs would have to be on very short odds before I would take that as much of an indication of real confidence that they would win. Add to that the greater disposable incomes of LD and Tory supporters vs Labour and Green, and religious backgrounds with opposition to gambling (Methodist, Quaker, Muslim) being unevenly split between the parties.
I’m an LD, but am broke and don’t gamble anyway…
Outside Queens Park and Harpur, posterboards are overwhelmingly LD or Tory. One of the reasons I think Patrick is doomed is that his visible support in Tory and LD Wards (from 1997/2001/2005) has largely evaporated.
ThomThumb,
That isn’t what I have seen recently in Castle or Kempston, and from what I saw even Putnoe had less LD posters up than at the mayoral election. One particular oddity: I went down a street in Castle that previous occasion I had been down it, had a surprising number of Tory posters. Tonight, none: no sign of them.
As for 2005, I can’t compare most of the areas with 2005 myself, because I was busy contesting Mid Beds then.
Have a look at Betfair. Money is moving to Conservative.
Eamonn, another option is to give up trying to second-guess what others are doing, and just vote for the party that has the policies that reflect your views best. You might find looking at the independent VoteForPolicies website informative.
Ben, many of the LD and Tory boards have been stolen or vandalised. I have visions a great clunking fist going round in the middle of the night
Bedford Realist – no doubt Fuller is the favourite here but my quandry is how do I vote to stop him? And noone seems to know which is exciting and unnerving at the same time. First time ever that I have entered election day uncertain of my vote. Never thought Bedford would be a third way marginal. Maybe it isn’t but we won’t know until approx. 4:30am on Friday.
All the polls and analysis indicates this seat is too close to call.
In my view Bedford may even be considered a bellweather constituency. Which ever party wins this will hold the most MPs in parliament.
However, based on the above 2005 distribution of votes against the national average then and applying this variance to the current national polls, I feel that the most likely winners will either be Labour or Conservatives. Crude and unscientific, I agree.
Based on my own gut feeling I am going for a Labour hold, just. With a majority of less than a 1000.
BedfordRealist, if you REALLY,REALLY have a gut feeling that Labour are in with a shout here, then you can STILL get odds of 9/1 against Labour winning – or if you’re into spreads, you can still bet against Labour being 1st OR second and walk away with a profit. So, do you trust your gut?
Hello all – I will make my prediction for Bedford after tonight’s football match (Man City v Spurs). I may even provide a rationale.
A great football match.
Now for my prediction.
Background factors taken into account
- Labour nationally are better political campaign managers (certainly sine 1997);
- Patrick Hall is a likeable, hardworking, honest local MP;
- since 1997 when Labour won with c 50%, all of Labour’s decline of 9% has gone to the LIberals who now have 22%;
- since 2005, the Liberal Democrats have advanced at local level: particularly in the northern wards and have defeated the Tories in De Parys, Putnoe, Brickhill etc.;
- the tory campaign in 2005 was very poor and their record in local government elections in the last 5 years has been catastrophic – particularly the car crash of te Mayoralty Election in 2009;
- Tory Council group is (in the words of a local journalist) a buch of weirdos who do not like each other;
- Liberal democrat candidate Henry Vann is very unimpressive (why on earth did they choose him?);
- Tory campaign in 2010 (in Bedford) has been excellent – very tough, experienced people
So, Labour will decline in accordance with the national mood but offset a bit by Patrick’s performance. Slight decline for the Tories as they see defections to Liberals become permanent. A slight rise in the Others because of prominence of immigration. Labour’s decline greater than Tories’ defection to the Liberals
Down to the wire between Conservative and Labour. Final score:
Conservative………34
Labour……………….33
Lib Dem……………..28
Others…………………5
Depending on turnout a Conservative gain of less than 500
Ben, good luck for tomorrow even though I don’t think you’re going to win.
Cheers, Galloglass.
Lots of undecided: This demographic will vote last minute for Cameron. Tory press scare stories on election day will sway it . 2,000-3,000 maj.
Voted at 7am – plenty of people already there. Expecting a Tory gain with maj 1,000-1,500, unfortunately.
I have been out-and-about in town – pleasantly surprised by the ‘thumbs ups’ from people for me. Also went to vote: surprised to find no LD or Lab tellers at the polling station. I presume both are concentrating on more favourable parts of the town for them.
Guardian advising tactical Labour vote in Bedford if one wishes to keep the Tories out. It gives polling figures of Con 37% Lab 34% LD 25% based on their Wednesday poll.
It also has the following notes;
Figures in charts are crude projections of results using the national vote changes implied by the final Guardian/ ICM poll which put the Conservatives on 36 (up 3 percentage points since 2005), Labour on 28 (down 8 percentage points) and Lib Dems on 26 (up 3 percentage points). These are applied to the standard Rallings & Thrasher estimates for the composition of the new constituencies in 2005.
For the avoidance of absurdities, no Labour constituency vote share is projected below 5 per cent; the crude figure is levelled up first from the 3 points otherwise accruing to ‘others’ and then if necessary from the Lib Dem gains.
CON gain
Maj. 300
I’m getting ready for a long night at the count, missing out on all of the excitement on telly to stare at a lot of ballot papers on which people have put crosses against other people. It’s an odd world.
Good luck Ben
Ben, up here the returning officer usually has a room set aside for the candidates and agents as well as local dignitaries equipped with a TV.
With a bit of luck they will do the same in Bedford.
Thomthumb May 4th, 2010
“I predict the winner will not get 35% of the vote. It’s very close as they enter the final gallop to the the line – possibly a photofinish between Con and LD with Lab trailing in third.”
Not exactly, Thomthumb. Your attempts to pump and hype weren’t enough to get your LD candidate into 2nd, or even to keep it above 20%, but they were enough to confuse some anti-Tory tactical voters.
My own vote was clearly squeezed by much better funded campaigns, but I feel the local Green Party comes out of this election stronger than it went into it.
Sorry ‘it’ remained after a re-phrasing: Henry is a pretty affable bloke, and I wouldn’t intentionally refer to him as ‘it’. Also sorry if I was a bit short of gracious.
But news from Brighton makes all my effort feel worthwhile.
Well, I said 1% and it was 3%.
I got the right order…..Conservative, Labour, LibDem
But I got share of vote very wrong!
A truly terrible result for the Liberal Democrats. I will not repeat my comments about their candidate…..who was useless.
The Tories ran a phenomenal campaign on the day.
Oh, dear, my career as a soothsayer is cut tragically short! In my defence all I can say is nearly all the other national predictions were just as wrong. Not just in Bedford but in many other places LD support fell away suddenly in the last couple of days – to both Tory and Labour alike. Who would have thought the LDs could manage to LOSE a safe(ish) seat like Chesterfield to Labour !
So I fear I have to slink off the stage and hie me to a nunnery (along with Gordon
)
This went as expected – I thought it would be a 1,000-1,500 Tory Maj. and it came in at 1,353.
Agree about the Tory campaign – as I drove home on Thurs early evening there seemed to be lots of ‘bright, young’ Tory boys and girls chatting with anyone they could find on the street.
This will be an interesting seat should there be another election in the near future (Sept/Oct 2010 or Mar/Apr 2011 anyone?) as the falacy of Bedford being a three-horse-race was exposed on Thursday. Will the Lib Dem voters move across to Lab now they realise this is the only way to remove the Tories?
Bedford Realist – well done on calling the result correctly (if not the finer details).
It seems the desolution with Labour (in particular, Gordon Brown) went deeper than anticipated.
I think this should be a warning to Labour not to try and hang on in power through a disparate multi-party coalition.
Does anyone know what happened to the issue of changing the number and size of parliamentary constituencies? Was it mentioned in the Coalition Agreement? Interesting to speculate what would have happened if Bedford had had AV for this election……Patrick might just have held on. Agree that it is a 2 party marginal and not 3. What will happen to the Lib Dems locally? I wouldn’t be surprised if they choose another candidate
Ben Foley, according to the local gazette it seems as you were the only candidate who hasn’t submitted your election expenses. I’m wondering about the reason for this failure to comply with election rules?
Max, whatever it says in a local rag (that I didn’t see myself) my expenses have been submitted (iirc before you posted). If you want to go along to the council to find out how efficiently I converted a small sum of money into votes, you are welcome to do so. … oh and we took the novel approach of being honest in the return too.
Meanwhile, on the blog part of this site (…/blog/archives/2753?cp=5) I have posted on what I think the impact of the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill would be on Bedfordshire.
It looks like Bedford Borough and Central Beds together will be allocated 4 constituencies (essentially as at present), while Luton isn’t big enough for 2, and will have to take in some voters from Hertfordshire somehow. The requirement to be within +or- 5% of the UK quota size will, however, mean boundary changes, since this constituency is only 90% of the quota electorate.
My guess is that Mid Beds constituency will no longer extend into Bedford Borough with Wootton and Turvey joining Bedford constituency, to make a constituency 98.5%
of the quota size, and thus within the 5% margin. (This is on current ward boundaries that are in the process of revision, whereas the BC will work on the new ward boundaries, but it gives an idea of possibilities.)
Turvey is rather out on a limb, on that boundary, but it would be joining NE Beds (and currently is, in Mid Beds). On these thoughts Wilstead joins NE Beds constituency, while Langford and Henlow would move from NE Beds into Mid Beds.
I don’t know Bedford,
but I’d say this was a very fractionally better Con and Lab result than one might have expected, and a slightly bad one for the LDs.
A squeeze probably.
Bedford has been contested between Labour and the Conservatives in general elections since the end of WWII, and this knowledge could have coloured the preferences of some voters.Although in good years the Tories have had large majorities here (before the boundaries changed in Labour’s favour in 1997), it was always Labour which challenged the Tories if anyone did.
Just noticed Ben mentioned Turvey above – very special place to me, where I had my very first pint of ale.
Only modest changes in share of the vote:
C +5.4%
Lab -5.7%
LD -2.0%
UKIP +0.1%
BNP +1.7%
Grn +0.9%
It will be interesting to see who will win the Mayoral Election here. I can’t see the LibDems holding on, so the Conservatives or Labour could be in with a chance to win. On current polling however, I think Labour will gain the Mayoralty with the council remaining NOC.
I think Labour are hard pushed to win. If it was just the urban area of Bedford & Kempston I would agre with you but with over 40,000 voters in extraneous rural wards where Labour support is pretty derisory they would need a pretty huge lead in the urban area
I understand Labour are going to select their candidate for the next General Election this summer, which seems VERY odd to me, given that they won’t even have provisional indications of what the new boundaries might be. How do you decide the selection electorate, if you don’t know the boundary?
Its a good point. Most likely Bedford will just pick up a couple of extra rural wards but we don’t know which wards yet. A more radical solution could see Kempston removed to beds Mid and Bedford taking in all the rural areas in the northern tip of the ocunty, as per 1983-97. I don’t think that very likely, but what should happen if Labour members in Kempston were involved in selecting a candidate only to find that they aren’t in the constituency, while Labour members in Bromham or Sharnbrook had no say and find that they are.
The Mayoral election was good for the LDs compared to most of the country – they held on relatively easily. IN the council Labour and Conservatives gained seats with Independents going down most (though as there were new ward boundaries direct gains/losses are not always easy to define). The council ended up Con 12 Lab 12 LD 12 Ind 4
Yes, Bedford is among the 26 seats where Labour is starting the selection process
My understanding is that the selectorate are based on current constituencies and the new candidates will carry on to new ones once finalised regardless if there are wards moving in and out.
I know it sounds odd. If the selection is close, one ward being in or out could make the difference in who the winner is.
They chose the 26 areas in a way where it’s not likely the seat will be abolished completely…but I think there’re 1-2 cases where they also have this risk
If Labour are selecting now, it seems to me that they maybe preparing for a general election within the next year. I’m all for early selection, but they should really wait until the new boundaries are defined first of all.
It shows that Labour are not fully on the ball if they’re selecting candidates without knowing what the constituencies will be like. The obvious problem with doing this is that it maybe difficult to change a candidate once they’ve been selected even if they boundary changes mean that a different type of candidate would be more suitable.
In the early 80s many Labour candidates were selected for constituencies on their old boundaries, and then many had to be rerun to take into account the boundary changes.
One wonders if Labour have got a list of potential retirees as if they are going to select candidates, they will reserve their ‘favourites’ for Labour held seats. One candidate could be selected for a target seat and then change their mind and go for a safe seat instead.