Havant
2010 Results:
Conservative: 22433 (51.1%)
Labour: 7777 (17.71%)
Liberal Democrat: 10273 (23.4%)
UKIP: 2611 (5.95%)
English Democrat: 809 (1.84%)
Majority: 12160 (27.7%)
Notional 2005 Results:
Conservative: 18140 (44.3%)
Labour: 11776 (28.8%)
Liberal Democrat: 8272 (20.2%)
Other: 2734 (6.7%)
Majority: 6364 (15.6%)
Actual 2005 result
Conservative: 18370 (44.4%)
Labour: 11862 (28.7%)
Liberal Democrat: 8358 (20.2%)
BNP: 562 (1.4%)
Green: 1006 (2.4%)
UKIP: 998 (2.4%)
Other: 195 (0.5%)
Majority: 6508 (15.7%)
2001 Result
Conservative: 17769 (43.9%)
Labour: 13562 (33.5%)
Liberal Democrat: 7508 (18.6%)
UKIP: 561 (1.4%)
Green: 793 (2%)
Other: 244 (0.6%)
Majority: 4207 (10.4%)
1997 Result
Conservative: 19204 (39.7%)
Labour: 15475 (32%)
Liberal Democrat: 10806 (22.4%)
Referendum: 2395 (5%)
Other: 442 (0.9%)
Majority: 3729 (7.7%)
Boundary changes:
Profile:
Current MP: David Willetts(Conservative) (more information at They work for you)
David Willetts(Conservative) (more information at They work for you)Robert Smith (Labour) Alex Payton (Liberal Democrat)Gary Kerrin (UKIP) Fungus Addams (English Democrat) 2001 Census Demographics
Total 2001 Population: 89038
Male: 47.9%
Female: 52.1%
Under 18: 22.9%
Over 60: 24.7%
Born outside UK: 4.2%
White: 98.6%
Black: 0.2%
Asian: 0.4%
Mixed: 0.5%
Other: 0.3%
Christian: 73.1%
Full time students: 2.4%
Graduates 16-74: 14.7%
No Qualifications 16-74: 32.6%
Owner-Occupied: 71.3%
Social Housing: 21.5% (Council: 12.3%, Housing Ass.: 9.2%)
Privately Rented: 4.6%
Homes without central heating and/or private bathroom: 15.4%
This is a seat where the Labour party has been doing rather well relative to what’s been going on in the rest of the country. There does seem to be a small “Hove factor”, so-to-speak, going on here. It’s not enough to cause the Tories any serious problems yet, but it’s still interesting to watch.
The more likely reason for Labour’s good performance here is that Havant contains many strong council estate wards for them like Gosport and Portsmouth North. Despite this, Labour have still been almost wiped out locally and pose no credible threat in general elections.
Seeing as Labour are likely to have their ’1997′ at the next election, I don’t think any talk of Labour doing well in Havant is going to be relevant for at least the next 20 years
I agree with Harry on the safeness of Havant for the forseeable future. Although I am a little more cautious about the position the electoral cycle is currently in. I would think that the next election will be Labour’s 1992-i.e. the election that Labour should really want to lose if it is to avoid the sort of meltdown at the election after next that the Tories suffered in 1997.
Havant is certainly safe for a few elections, but it might be interesting if the electoral cycle swings back in the normal way.
Oh absolutely, as with Gosport there is a substantial Labour base that could well make the seat very close if they work it hard and the national swing is heavily in Labour’s direction like in 1997. Who knows how boundary changes could affect this area in the future?
Having spent the last election based in this seat while working for the MP here, I know that this is not a true blue Hampshire division but one where the Tories have to work hard to maintain their advantage. The Labour vote here comes from Leigh Park, a council estate for Portsmouth overspill (despite being situated outside the city boundaries), and one of the largest such estates in the country. Even though they fell back in 2005, Labour maintained second place despite a concerted push from the Lib Dems. There are some affluent and pleasant Tory voting areas, most notably at Emsworth and on Hayling Island as well as Bedhampton and the historic town of Havant itself. These areas should be enough to keep the seat blue and the Tories are also assisted by gentrification of the estate. However, it is not unimaginable that this seat might fall in an election a little bit more catastrophic than 1997.
Yes, I seem to remember hearing on the news a few years ago about some kind of violence taking place on an estate in Havant – probably Leigh Park. So not exactly a True Blue constituency like most Hampshire divisions.
I think this is one of those seats where Labour missed their chance in 1997 – like Wycombe, Lichfield, Beverley and Holderness.
It certainly doesn’t look particularly affluent or glamerous, but until there is another Labour landslide, it should be a safe Tory seat.
Even if there is it should be, as it was in 1997 and 2001. This seat is not remotely like Hove. As others have pointed out, the source of the Labour vote here is in Leigh Park and since that is not expanding there is no potential for the Labour vote to expand with it. Infact Labour appears to be losing support long term in such areas. The rest of the seat consists of solidly affluent middle class suburban areas. Hayling Island is a seasdie resort but has not seen any of the movement to the left that other such areas (like Hove) have. Infact it is the Tories strongest area in this seat.
Pete is quite correct. I’m surprised that anyone is talking about Labour winning this in the future. In 2001, when Gosport, Portsmouth N & even (!) Fareham swung to Labour, there was a slight increase in Willetts’ majority. Since 2005 Labour even lost a by-election in Battins & Bondfield, a council estate area. The Tories are quite safe here.
Chalk this up as another seat that might be more competitive were it not in the South East
Labour – whether New or Old – should be doing considerably better in many seats on the Hampshire & Sussex coast
David Willetts is running a campaign to stop these dreadful automated train announcements that South West Trains use.
Some companies do do it much better, but the SWT one is a particularly annoying grating voice, played far too loud because they are wrongly set in the depot, and the staff aren’t allowed to control it.
Far too frequent.
I hope he has more success than I did when I raised it twice.
SWT is a very good company overall though, so I don’t wish this to detract from that. But I think these announcement (apparently required by the EU for safety reasons) do need to be cut down to make rail travel more attractive.
In Birmingham there is one particular line where trains have a rolling TV news service broadcast throughout the carriages. It’s very loud and repeats itself every 5 minutes. Even in the supposedly quiet zone it can still be heard. There’s nothing passengers can do to get away from it apart from put their hands over their ears. What surprises me is that more people have complained about it.
It does amaze me that people just sit in appalling discomfort and say nothing.
But that’s a good thing in a way.
When I heard that David W had been inundated with support on this issue, I was quite surprised, I just thought it was me.
Andy, that does sound really quite appalling – what it is that makes some think they have to do other people’s thinking for them?
The only doubt in my mind about this seat is as to who will come second, an issue which appears not to have been discussed.
On all recent polls, the Labour share of the vote may be extected to go down, which one might think would take them below the LibDems. But on the other hand the polls also suggest there will be a swing from the Libdems to the Tories.
The Greens and UKIP got few votes here at the last election, but on the European election results might be expected to do better next time, although either party would be very pleased to save its deposit.
Nobody posted about the county council and European results in this seat. More information please!
But unless something untoward happens to him personally, which none of us would want, we can safely expect David Willets to be back at Westminster after the election, probably playing a leading role in the next Government.
Sorry, a typo. I meant David Willetts of course.
“Nobody posted about the county council and European results in this seat. More information please!”
The county council votes cast in this seat:
Con 10654 41.2%
LD 5761 22.3%
UKIP 3329 12.9%
Lab 2476 9.6%
ED 2002 7.7%
Grn 1640 6.3%
The European votes are for the whole borough of Havant, parts of which are not in this consstituency:
Con 34.3%
UKIP 21.2%
LD 12.6%
Grn 9.6%
Lab 6.8%
BNP 5.5%
ED 3.7%
Disintegration in the Labour vote.
Not surprising as this is the sort of white working class and lower middle class constituency where Labour have been getting dredful results.
The only difference it has to places like Morecambe and South Ribble is that it is already a Conservative seat.
Pete, do you know how low the Labour vote was here in 1977?
They got 14.9% (in the borough as a whole) then but they did still win a county council seat, presumably in the Leigh Park area. This year they came fourth in the CC division which covers Leigh Park (and they had won a seat there still in 2005) with 12.5% of the vote. there are not many startker examples of the collapse of Labour support amongst the white working class especially in southern England.
I wish I had posted on the Euro results for Havant because that’s almost the worst result I’ve seen for Labour, relatively speaking. They were down to about 4% in Mole Valley and South Somerset but obviously one would expect them to do very badly in places like that.
This seat was Portsmouth Langston prior to 1974.
I presume that the Portsmouth parts were merged with the parts of Portsmouth West (not annexed by Portsmouth South) to form Portsmouth North.
Portsmouth Langston was essentially North East Portsmouth and the Havant areas around Langston Harbour.
I assume when the areas of Portsmouth West that went into Portsmouth South are taken into account, more of the post 1974 Portsmouth North constituency was the massive electorate of Portsmouth Langston as opposed to Portsmouth West (which had a small electorate anyway).
The comparison between the 1977 County Council elections and the 1979 General Elections
vs
the 2009 County Elections and the 2009/2010 General Election
is an interesting and useful one.
The Labour and Tory shares in 2009/2010 are below 1977 and 1979,
but it is still a useful model.
Pete has given us a 14.9% Labour share for Havant (Borough) in 1977.
In the Parliamentary seat in 1979,
Labour polled 24.5% in the actual seat of Havant
and Waterloo
and 25.7% in the 1979 notional result for the new seat of 1982.
However, that new seat also included Waterloo so I take it it’s part of the Borough.
I don’t think either Havant (notional) or Havant and Waterloo (actual) included the whole of the Borough though,
but I think it’s a reasonable guide.
So what should we expect in 2009/10 here…
Labour about 20% as a most likely I think.
I should add,
some of these collapses are due to non voting,
although turnout overall was respectable nationally in 2009, and likely to be up in 2009/10.
It would be interesting to assess the figures in a lot more places for 1977 and 2009 County Council elections, and perhaps we should do so.
The Lib Dems have selected Alex Payton here
Cons Hold= 10,000 maj
Con Hold
Maj 11 300
Con maj 12,000
Which seats included Havant from 1885 to 1974?
Con maj 9000
(Just in case anyone is paying any interest in my predictions, i’m not just guessing.. i have a spreadsheet y’know)
CON HOLD
Quite a good result for David Willetts; his share of the vote isn’t far off the ’92 notional one.
The percentage majority is actually larger than for the ’92 notinals because the Lib Dems are also down a bit compared to those figures.
Being in charge of universities, Mr Willetts may be thankful that he has Hayling Island to escape to. The neighbouring Portsmouth students will not be happy with increased tuition fees, and the university staff won’t like the inevitable cuts to their budgets.
I don’t envy him his job.
I think Havant itself was in Langstone 1950-74 and Fareham before that?
David Willetts has said that the Conservative Party must modernise to stay in touch with the British people, and must view society as it is and not as they’d like it to be:
Interesting. Willetts’ pronouncements in the past suggest he is no enemy of tradition. Although I think his intellectual ability is sometimes overrated, he is blessed with very calm demeanour when under fire, and I think that the Conservative Party has often underused him as a spokesman. He’s a very effective proponent of Conservative philosophy.
Willetts was a moderniser when it was a very difficult and career-destroying position to take, under the Hague and IDS leaderships. For that he deserves great respect.
His problem is that he is widely regarded as “too clever by half” – never good for your career in the Tory party.
I saw the bit quite late on Friday when they introduced all the countries, and that was interesting.
A very easily understood summary giving a slight indication of what all the countries were and what they might look like.
A shame I was out of the room when NZ were introduced – thought there’d be a larger contingent from Tonga perhaps.
The politically correct bit I saw was near the end when they had several people who were rather made out to be just accepted as establishment but included Shami Chakribati.
In a democracy, people should also be allowed to speak their views without being shouted down – I have defended people with very different views on here.
Sorry wrong thread.
Tory Leader of Havant borough council quoted today saying that the borough xshould consider changing its historic name to avoid sounding too much like the “Have’s and Have Nots”.
…Which of course just goes to illustrate what I have long recognised-that having a Tory council and Tory councillors is not necessarily a guarantee of having good people and commonsense local politics.
I wonder what makes a longstanding, senior local councillor wake up one morning and just decide he’s going to go out and publically humiliate himself for no reason?
And yet it happens all too often in local government.
We need people to address the big problems, not become obsessed with irrelevant minutia such as this.