Carmarthen East and Dinefwr
2010 Results:
Conservative: 8506 (22.38%)
Labour: 10065 (26.48%)
Liberal Democrat: 4609 (12.13%)
Plaid Cymru: 13546 (35.64%)
UKIP: 1285 (3.38%)
Majority: 3481 (9.16%)
Notional 2005 Results:
Plaid Cymru: 17154 (45.9%)
Labour: 10586 (28.3%)
Conservative: 5093 (13.6%)
Liberal Democrat: 3629 (9.7%)
Other: 910 (2.4%)
Majority: 6569 (17.6%)
Actual 2005 result
Conservative: 5235 (13.7%)
Labour: 10843 (28.3%)
Liberal Democrat: 3719 (9.7%)
Plaid Cymru: 17561 (45.9%)
UKIP: 661 (1.7%)
Other: 272 (0.7%)
Majority: 6718 (17.5%)
2001 Result
Conservative: 4912 (12.9%)
Labour: 13540 (35.6%)
Liberal Democrat: 2815 (7.4%)
Plaid Cymru: 16130 (42.4%)
UKIP: 656 (1.7%)
Majority: 2590 (6.8%)
1997 Result
Conservative: 5022 (12%)
Labour: 17907 (42.9%)
Liberal Democrat: 3150 (7.5%)
Plaid Cymru: 14457 (34.6%)
Referendum: 1196 (2.9%)
Majority: 3450 (8.3%)
Boundary changes:
Profile:
Current MP: Jonathan Edwards (Plaid Cymru)
Andrew Morgan (Conservative) Christine Gwyther (Labour) Bill Powell (Liberal Democrat)Jonathan Edwards (Plaid Cymru) John Atkinson (UKIP)2001 Census Demographics
Total 2001 Population: 67309
Male: 48.5%
Female: 51.5%
Under 18: 21.9%
Over 60: 25.8%
Born outside UK: 2.2%
White: 99.3%
Asian: 0.2%
Mixed: 0.3%
Other: 0.2%
Christian: 75.1%
Full time students: 2.7%
Graduates 16-74: 18.1%
No Qualifications 16-74: 33.7%
Owner-Occupied: 73.8%
Social Housing: 15.7% (Council: 13%, Housing Ass.: 2.6%)
Privately Rented: 7%
Homes without central heating and/or private bathroom: 7.5%
Labour choose ex Carms West AM – Christine Gwyther.
Bwuh?
“Candidates:
Rhys Williams (Labour”
“Dewi
Labour choose ex Carms West AM – Christine Gwyther.”
Dok – he withdrew on health grounds after writing in “Barn” that he “hates” Welsh speaking Welsh people. Quite a while back…..
Cheers Dewi
I’ve just seen that someone claimed that the major parties could “lose their deposits” if an Independent stood – one of the most outlandish claims on this site yet.
Aye, I just ignored that claim. Especially given that it was parlty based on the notion that Carmarthen town is in Carms East which, as others have pointed out, it is not.
PC Hold= 8,000 maj
Plaid Cymru 7000-8000 Majority. Labour down quite a bit, struggle to keep in second place.
PC Hold
Maj 5300
PC hold maj 9000
PC maj 9,500
PC HOLD
Drop in Plaids share of the vote indicates Adam Price personal vote here.
Another narrower than expected Plaid majority, but they will hope first-time incumbency lifts them out of trouble here.
I don’t think it will though. Plaid needed to build up a really commanding majority if they were to look like holding this at a time of Labour recovery and advances.
With AV I wonder whether some Tory voters might choose Labour as their second preference rather than Plaid Cymru?
It’s true that Scotland and Wales – with four main parties – will have the most unpredictable seats under AV.
Like you say, in seats which boil down to Lab vs SNP or Lab vs PC, it’s not easy to guess where Tory and LD later preferences will go.
The vast majority of the polls are still showing that the yes to AV side is ahead – although the turnout threshold might still get in the way.
That is IF they are used at all. If the next election is fought under AV, I fully intend to cast a single vote by putting a single cross in a single box! Apparantly, many partisan voters are expected to do precisely that.
‘That is IF they are used at all. If the next election is fought under AV, I fully intend to cast a single vote by putting a single cross in a single box! Apparantly, many partisan voters are expected to do precisely that.’
That’s perfectly allowed, your vote will simply be counted as a 1st preference.
‘It’s true that Scotland and Wales – with four main parties – will have the most unpredictable seats under AV.
Like you say, in seats which boil down to Lab vs SNP or Lab vs PC, it’s not easy to guess where Tory and LD later preferences will go.’
I was thinking about this, in most of Scotland I suppose a lot of lab voters could give their 2nd preference to the SNP and vice versa but it could be more interesting in the NE
Perhaps the same will go for Wales.
I also wonder if some more right leaning plaid voters might have gone over to the tories in this seat, Ynys Mon and Aberconwy because of the lab-PC coalition.
In Australia you have to rank each and every candidate, otherwise your vote is invalid. I can understand why that system hasn’t been proposed by anyone in this country since it would force people to choose between BNP and NF in some constituencies.
‘I can understand why that system hasn’t been proposed by anyone in this country since it would force people to choose between BNP and NF in some constituencies.’
And that’s the only reason you can think of for not introducing it into this country?
As imperfect as FPTP is, when you compare to all the other type of voting systems it always emerges as the least worst
It’s simple and keeps the door shut to extremist parties.
Had they stuck with the FPTP system in European elections I’d almost certainly still vote, and I doubt I’m the only one
Tim, I find it slightly bizarre that you would rather cast a vote in a FPTP election in a massive constituency that bears little relation to any identifiable community (as was the case with most of the old single member Euro constituencies), where your vote is quite likely to make little difference to the outcome than in an election conducted under PR where every vote has the same level of significance.
If your beef is the fact that under closed lists you can only vote for a party rather than a candidate (and I do remember at the time of the first Euros conducted under PR in 1999 that a lot of people did not like that aspect of the new system), then to me a better remedy would be to switch to open lists. At least with the latter system there is no scope for parties to manipulate the ranking of candidates on the list on spurious grounds such as race, gender or whether the candidate is an incumbent MEP. Instead voters decide which candidates from their chosen party get elected.
Tim – I was simply comparing AV where you do have to list all the candidates to AV where you don’t have to do so. Australian general elections use the first system but Australian state elections use the second AFAIK. I wasn’t talking about FPTP.
Why did Adam Price stand down? He always seemed to be on tv.
I have to say, I’m a little surprised by Tim’s support for FPTP as well. Nevertheless, he is correct.
The BBC and others keep going on about how the BNP won seats in the EU elections, but what they never say is that if the election had been under FPTP then they would have won precisely NOTHING. In fact, they managed to pile on barely any extra real votes and yet gained two seats.
Of course anomolies occur under FPTP as much as any system, but the system used in the EU elections is a national scandal which nobody in any party seems willing to condemn.
Perhaps instead of wasting hundreds of thousands giving people a referendum on an electoral system that nobody wants and which neither governing party supports or indeed proposed at the election, perhaps we should be concentrating on changing the EU electoral system.
I would demand FPTP regardless of the fact that EU dictats have effectively banned it. But even AV would be a vast improvement on the list system.
keiran
open lists would certainly be an improvement than what we’ve currently got for the euro elections but to my mind one of the best things about the fptp system is that each constituency – whether for the european or british parliament – has a representative in an mp or mep
he works for his electorate and usually if they don’t like him they don’t vote for him at the next election
that gives him a clear, straightforward and identifiable remit which you don’t always get with most forms of PR
of course the alternative vote proposal is an attempt to solve this problem but ultimitely i think it needlessly complicates a perfectly workable system
“one of the best things about the fptp system is that each constituency… has a representative in an mp or mep”
Or, alternatively, has an MP who doesn’t represent many of the constituents and in some cases does very little, knowing that their seat is safe, regardless – just look at the Middlesbrough MP who hasn’t held a surgery in fourteen years.
Multi-member seats are the ideal solution – each larger seat has several representatives who represent the views of a greater proportion of their constituents, and at least some of them will be aware that their seats aren’t safe.
Their remits remain clear, straightforward and identifiable, arguably more so, and are just as likely to be voted out at the next election (except under the hopeless party list system).
Welsh Assembly 2011: Lab Gain