Bridgend
2010 Results:
Conservative: 11668 (30.43%)
Labour: 13931 (36.33%)
Liberal Democrat: 8658 (22.58%)
Plaid Cymru: 2269 (5.92%)
BNP: 1020 (2.66%)
UKIP: 801 (2.09%)
Majority: 2263 (5.9%)
Notional 2005 Results:
Labour: 14635 (43.2%)
Conservative: 8613 (25.4%)
Liberal Democrat: 7338 (21.6%)
Plaid Cymru: 2317 (6.8%)
Other: 990 (2.9%)
Majority: 6022 (17.8%)
Actual 2005 result
Conservative: 9887 (26.1%)
Labour: 16410 (43.3%)
Liberal Democrat: 7949 (21%)
Plaid Cymru: 2527 (6.7%)
Green: 595 (1.6%)
UKIP: 491 (1.3%)
Majority: 6523 (17.2%)
2001 Result
Conservative: 9377 (25.3%)
Labour: 19422 (52.5%)
Liberal Democrat: 5330 (14.4%)
Plaid Cymru: 2652 (7.2%)
Other: 223 (0.6%)
Majority: 10045 (27.1%)
1997 Result
Conservative: 9867 (22.8%)
Labour: 25115 (58.1%)
Liberal Democrat: 4968 (11.5%)
Plaid Cymru: 1649 (3.8%)
Referendum: 1662 (3.8%)
Majority: 15248 (35.2%)
Boundary changes:
Profile:
Current MP: Madeleine Moon(Labour) (more information at They work for you)
Helen Baker (Conservative) Madeleine Moon(Labour) (more information at They work for you)Wayne Morgan (Liberal Democrat)Nick Thomas (Plaid Cymru)Dave Fulton (UKIP)Brian Urch (BNP) 2001 Census Demographics
Total 2001 Population: 70966
Male: 48.4%
Female: 51.6%
Under 18: 22.7%
Over 60: 22.9%
Born outside UK: 3.1%
White: 98.2%
Asian: 0.5%
Mixed: 0.5%
Other: 0.7%
Christian: 71.3%
Full time students: 2.7%
Graduates 16-74: 19.3%
No Qualifications 16-74: 30.5%
Owner-Occupied: 77.7%
Social Housing: 13.9% (Council: 9.8%, Housing Ass.: 4.2%)
Privately Rented: 5.4%
Homes without central heating and/or private bathroom: 4.4%
Definately Labour hold at next years Assembly election (Carwyn Jones is the AM).
Kind of a dissapointing result for Labour polling 36% however expect the Lib-Dem vote to collapse here next time with the beneficiary being Labour.
A seat that seems to be trending Conservative long-term. It will likely be a good few elections before it goes blue though – probably the next time Labour are voted out of office.
Oh no, Paul. This is one of our main targets for the next election.
Tory vote only up 7.6% since 1997 Paul which is hardly a massive shift towards them. The Labour vote has fallen 22% which is more worrying. I dont see this seat falling to the Tories next time though.
I think it’s more like 8.3% up given the boundary change this time – which is a substantial rise.
Without knowing the seat, I would have thought a Tory gain is possible if they improve next time.
More likely, though, the LD vote will collapse and Labour will push up their majority to about 5,000.
It’s too early to say.
To suggest that Labour will increase its majority here and elsewhere would almost be to give up hope that the Conservatives will remain in government beyond 2015, given the current numbers in the House of Commons.
By the next election it will have been over 30 years since an incumbent party strenghtened its position in a general election and that’s what we ought to be setting our sights on imho.
Well of course all governments set their sights on increasing their number of seats and vote share, but the fact that it so rarely happens reflects the fact that it is incredibly hard to achieve.
Governments win by building a particular coalition of voters, and that coalition gradually frays and breaks up over the years.
Next time we will have the unknown factor of what happens to Lib Dem support, especially in areas where they challenge Labour.
VoteDave,
I haven’t given up on it atall – I just don’t know what the likely result is going to be.
I suspect though, if the LDs lose significant support, the way that unravels will not be even in different types of seats.
HH is correct I think – normally Government’s don’t increase their share – although in the Tories we obviously hope that 2010 was an unusual case where we underperformed from what was likely to have happened a few months before.
(although I suspect it was only 2-3% or so)
The Liberal Democrats have made very considerable progress in this seat in recent years: South Wales outside Cardiff has “traditionally” been a bad prospect for them and presumably they have targeted this area (most of what I know about this seat is from times before that).
All the polls suggest that participation in the ConDem coalition is causing problems for LibDems prospects. My guess is a substantial amount of the LibDem support here will be that of the Welsh middle class which culturally comes from a heritage in which the Tories are out of the question (e.g. people whose parents lived in The Valleys and now live in modern housing in this area.). These voters are likely to abstain or go back to Labour, not to the Conservatives.
If (a big if) things at the next election in terms of political support are as in the current polls, the scenario night be the Conservatives staying around 30%, perhaps drifting upwards by a couple of percent, but the LibDems going down to between 10 and 15%, and correspondingly Labour going up to about 50%, as an anti-coalition vote rather than a pro-Labour one.
Of course, the electoral effects may depend on AV, changed boundaries etc.
“All the polls suggest that participation in the ConDem coalition is causing problems for LibDems prospects. My guess is a substantial amount of the LibDem support here will be that of the Welsh middle class which culturally comes from a heritage in which the Tories are out of the question (e.g. people whose parents lived in The Valleys and now live in modern housing in this area.). These voters are likely to abstain or go back to Labour, not to the Conservatives.”
I agree, the same is true of Pontypridd to an extent.
Welsh Assembly 2011: Lab Hold
In what appears to be the only by-election taking place yesterday, Labour held Bettws ward with a slightly increased share of the vote (79.9%). Sorry I don’t know whether the ward is actually in this constituency though it is definitely in the Bridgend council area. The Greens came 2nd with about 24% of the vote in the May elections, as the only alternative to Labour. They appear to have put quite a bit of effort into the by-election but received a paltry 16 votes, the great majority of what anti-Labour vote there was going to an Independent.
It’s in Ogmore constituency. BC’s first recommendations moves it into Aberavon & Ogmore
Thanks Andrea – Ogmore not a constituency of which we speak much here!