Sunderland Central
2010 Results:
Conservative: 12770 (30.07%)
Labour: 19495 (45.91%)
Liberal Democrat: 7191 (16.93%)
BNP: 1913 (4.51%)
UKIP: 1094 (2.58%)
Majority: 6725 (15.84%)
Notional 2005 Results:
Labour: 18039 (51%)
Conservative: 8999 (25.4%)
Liberal Democrat: 5403 (15.3%)
Other: 2928 (8.3%)
Majority: 9040 (25.6%)
Actual 2005 result
Conservative: 5724 (19.8%)
Labour: 15719 (54.4%)
Liberal Democrat: 4277 (14.8%)
BNP: 1136 (3.9%)
Other: 2057 (7.1%)
Majority: 9995 (34.6%)
2001 Result
Conservative: 5331 (17.9%)
Labour: 18685 (62.7%)
Liberal Democrat: 3599 (12.1%)
BNP: 687 (2.3%)
Other: 1518 (5.1%)
Majority: 13354 (44.8%)
1997 Result
Conservative: 6370 (16.7%)
Labour: 26067 (68.2%)
Liberal Democrat: 3973 (10.4%)
Referendum: 1394 (3.6%)
Other: 409 (1.1%)
Majority: 19697 (51.5%)
Boundary changes: There are major readjustments to the seats in Tyne and Wear to take account of the reduction in the total number of seats allocated. Sunderland Central takes in the majority of the former Sunderland North seat, save for Castle and Redhill wards which move to Washington and Sunderland West, and the most Easterly part of the old Sunderland South constituency, the rest of which joins the new Houghton and Sunderland South. It also gains Ryhope ward from the old Houghton and Washington East seat.
Profile: Sunderland Central takes in the centre of the City of Sunderland itself and the coastal village of Ryhope to the South. To the north it takes is Roker (the site of Sunderland AFC`s former stadium) and Monkwearmouth (home to the new Stadium of Light) and the affluent Conservative stronghold of Fulwell. Sunderland itself is a former shipbuilding and coal mining town, both industries which have all but disappeared. Sunderand however is enjoying large scale inward investment and regeneration.
Both of the old Sunderland constituencies had been held by Labour since the 1960s. However, there are Conservative voters here – four of the nine wards in the constituency return Conservative councillors and unusually, despite the lower turnouts at local elections, the Conservatives managed to get more votes in the 2004 local elections in Sunderland than they did at the subsequent general election. The seat is not about to become a tight marginal, but the notional figures probably underestimate the strength the Tories could field if they were able to convert their local election support into national support.
Current MP: Julie Elliott (Labour) Trade union officer.
Lee Martin (Conservative) Sunderland councillor. Leader of the Conservative group.Julie Elliott (Labour) Trade union officer.
Paul Dixon (Liberal Democrat) Works for a property company. Sunderland councillor since 2006.Pauline Featonby-Warren (UKIP)John McCaffrey (BNP) 2001 Census Demographics
Total 2001 Population: 99971
Male: 49%
Female: 51%
Under 18: 21.4%
Over 60: 22.3%
Born outside UK: 3.8%
White: 96.9%
Black: 0.2%
Asian: 1.8%
Mixed: 0.6%
Other: 0.6%
Christian: 79.3%
Muslim: 1.5%
Full time students: 8.3%
Graduates 16-74: 14.5%
No Qualifications 16-74: 35.2%
Owner-Occupied: 62.7%
Social Housing: 27% (Council: 17.1%, Housing Ass.: 9.8%)
Privately Rented: 8.3%
Homes without central heating and/or private bathroom: 5.3%
Interesting that Gordon Brown chose to come here yesterday to campaign. I wouldn’t have thought this seat was vulnerable to the Tories but maybe he knows something we don’t.
“I live a few hundred yards fom the Glass Centre where the heckling took place today, and wandered down just in time to witness the strong-armed ejection of Mr Borthwick by members of the local labour party.
No-one in the area knew of Mr Brown’s visit in advance; a friend who works at the Glass Centre didn’t even know it was on.
There were no ‘civilians’ there, save for myself, two or three pensioners and a couple of chavs. An asian family arrived in a car just in time to shake hands with Mr Mandelson in front of the cameras (he didn’t shake hands with the chavs), but that was the sum total of the local presence.
All the rest of the crowd were either members of the press or the labour party, including the phalanx of young people who sat behind Mr Brown while he delivered his speech and then ran around waving Labour placards at all the assembled TV cameras.
The ejection of Mr Borthwick was a disgrace of course, he was manhandled and shoved a good two hundred yards away from the Glass Centre by a number of labour bully-boys and girls. It was also, as far as I could see, illegal; he had committed no offence save that of trying to exercise his right to free speech.
But worse, the event itself was a pointless and cynical public relations exercise that had nothing to do with the reality of life in Sunderland North, an area with some of the worst unemployment figures, lowest educational attainment and highest teenage pregnancy rates in Europe, and everything to do with Mr Brown finding a safe haven from which to broadcast another one of his ‘to do’ lists while surrounded by fawning acolytes.
The local MP, Bill Hetherington, famous more for his absence from the House of Commons and, according to some newspapers, his ability to drink himself senseless while on European conferences, was typically nowhere in sight.
I used to vote labour. No more. The labour party no longer represents working people like me; its leadership doesn’t speak for ordinary people, they don’t have any values in common with ordinary people, and they obviously can’t deal with meeting ordinary people.
After the way they treat Mr Borthwick, and others this week, I suspect that they secretly despise us.
Actually, they openly despise us. And to be honest, the feeling is mutual”
Pretty damning really. Dont waste your vote I urge you by NOT voting (although it is your right not to place a cross on the ballot box).
I would never encourage anyone not to vote, don’t you appreciate all the sacrifices that ordinary men and women went through to get the right to vote.
It is wrong not to vote. The other parties work hard to get a vote.
Labour, well that’s why I can’t vote Labour 13 years in power is too long I have to admit I would rather the political system change because one party governments although good can also be bad, power goes to the head of people like Thatcher, Major, Blair and Brown.
Labour have lost touch with reality with engaging with real voters from the last post given and I would suggest that is one reason I cannot vote for a party like Labour. Sometimes change is scary but if the tories get it wrong for me, I won’t go there again ! they have one chance and one chance only
Watching the BBC News tonight the previous postings by David and Gabriella Coscia are rather misguided. If Mr Borthwick had waited he could has asked his questions and got an answer. Gordon Brown said that to him.
If we look at the scenes outside Linn Products tonight where young voters in East Renfrewshire were “manhandled and shoved” by Tory own “bully-boys” and prevented from even attending the Tories own “meeting”.
This event makes David’s post look a bit hypocritical.
PA have released a list of expected declaration times, compiled with information from the councils. The first three are:
320 Houghton & Sunderland South 23:00
551 Sunderland Central 23:30
603 Washington & Sunderland West 23:30
…which clearly is later than in previous years for the predecessor seats.
Full list here: http://election.pressassociation.com/Declaration_times/general_by_time.php
LAB HOLD
Very convincing win in the end for Julie Elliott. It was always asking too much for the Tories to win in this territory & some people got a bit too excited. The swing is actually quite low for the NE.
Well after the 1350-plus posts here, the assurances that this seat would be on a knife edge etc, a fairly bog-standard and boring result in Sunderland Central.
With the amount of cash poured in from goodness knows where on leaflets, glossy brochures, billboard posters, roadside signs, an extremely compliant local paper, and so on, it really has to be questioned just how effective these means of campaigning now are – either that or Lee Martin suffered a backlash against perceived campgining overkill.
It also seems clear that Labour were more proficient than expected in getting their vote out, certainly more than int he other two Sunderland seats.
After Labour regained the council seats of Ryhope, and St Peters (narrowly), and Martin’s own seat of Barnes, its no surprise that rumours abound that he faces the chop as leader of the Tory group here too. (Meeting today at Tory council offices apparently)
{PS interesting enough polling results from the local rag from last Friday:
Is David Cameron as Prime Minister good news for Wearside?
22% Yes
78% No
(876 votes)
Quite conclusive I think.
“its no surprise that rumours abound that he faces the chop as leader of the Tory group here too. ”
He has quit as group leader according to local paper
He’s clearly very disillusioned by his party’s poor results, so it’s no surprise he’s decided to go before he was pushed.
The Tory performance here wasn’t that poor considering what happened (or what didn’t happen from a Tory point of view) in the likes of Gedling, Broxtowe, Bassetlaw and Birmingham Edgbaston. The Lab to Tory swing here was OK.
As to the fact that Labour gained a few council wards, surely that is to be expected on a GE turnout, and isn’t really any more significant than the Conservative gains made at council level in 1997.
I assume the poll quoted above by Outsider is one of those made up of a self selecting sample of visitors to a newspaper’s website, where multiple voting is incredibly easy for those who may be inclined to do so; in which case it was hardly worth posting really.
Lee’s resignation, and reports that the knives have been out for him prior even to polling day, rather goes against your hypothesis though, Kieran. Also, the Echo website actually only allows people to vote once, though of course you’re right that it is self-selecting.
James, I understand (from an article on Pb.com) that by repeatedly deleting the relevant cookie from your browser it is possible to vote more than once from the same computer in polls of that kind.
If you are correct and the knives were out for Lee prior to polling day, that to me suggests that the moves against him have little to do with the result of the election. There may be other legitimate reasons why Lee should step aside, but my point is that the result here should not to any fair minded observer justify any moves against him.
To say that the Conservative performance here was better than in the other constituencies mentioned in my previous post is simply a fact. Also the Labour to Conservative swing here was only 0.2% less than the UK wide swing. If I were Lee I would be pretty hacked off if people sought to use such a result to back up any assertion that I was in some way deficient as a candidate. A swing towards the party that that wasn’t a kick in the arse away from the national swing (and let’s remember the swing calculation for this seat is derived from notional results which may or may not have been a true reflection of what would have happened had the seat existed last time) would seem to suggest otherwise.
I bow to your superior technical knowledge as regards what may have skewed the poll, though I would have to question the sanity and/or fulfilment of an individual who would go through that procedure eight hundred times or more. I think Outsider probably raised it as a general point of interest rather than a conclusive argument as to why the Tories performed as they did in this seat. I would point out that, perhaps more than in any other election, local and regional factors played a part in determining the outcome in any given seat. As such I think it’s illegitimate to compare the swing in SC to other seats outside the region, let alone those with a much heaver AB contingent such as Edgbaston, Broxtowe and Gedling. More comparable seats such as WASW, HASS, Easington, Middlesbrough South, Darlington and Hartlepool – C1 and C2-heavy seats in the same region – all recorded a more substantial Labour—>Tory swing, and that’s without the other factors which have been mentioned ad nauseam upthread. Interestingly, if Lee Martin and his clan hadn’t got quite so carried away with their ramping and propagandising, expectations would have been more realistic and Lee Martin would still be Tory leader. Whatever, I wish him well for his (non-electoral) future.
I, although a political opponent, wish Lee Martin well and I regret that he felt it necessary to give up the Leadership of the Tory Group.
I am no expert on swings etc., but I do know that Cameron’s threat to the North-East region became a major issue to voters and that Clarke’s dismissal of the devastation created in Sunderland during the Thatcher years, brought waverers back to the fold.
In my opinion, Lee was the best candidate the Tories have had in 50 years and no-one could have worked harder, but they made big mistakes in their campaign and in the process lost two of their strongholds in the local election, including Lee’s own Ward of Barnes.
Sunderland is and will remain a Labour city therefore I think Lee’s political future lies elsewhere and in view of the fact that he was let down by his own leaders and had sacrificed his professional career to be a full-time candidate, I feel the Tory hierarchy owes him the opportunity of a safer parliamentary prospect.
I wouldn’t really classify Cameron or Clarke’s remarks regarding the NE as any kind of gaff, more an accurate statement of what the Conservative Party believes. If people in areas such as this really do sincerely believe that the decline in traditional heavy industries was a calculated result of the policies of a Tory government rather than a manifestation of economic reality, and that there exists no viable economic future for the region other than one in which it is heavily dependent upon state largesse, then they are never going to vote Conservative however good a campaign the party runs.
The Tory Party is never going to win an election anywhere on the basis that it will implement tax and spend policies better than Labour. If those are the kind of policies people want they will vote Labour. The task of the Conservative Party is to get across the point that there is an alternative. That an economic future based on state handouts is really not much of a future at all, whereas one built on free enterprise and enabling the region to stand on its own two feet economically is likely to be far more sustainable in the long term.
Which constituencies have included Seaburn since 1885? Was it in the two-seat Sunderland constituency until it was abolished in 1950?
I believe:
Sunderland (two member seat) 1885-1950
Sunderland North 1950-2010
Sunderland Central 2010-
(It’s worth noting that the area is almost entirely inter- and post-war suburbia and thus, unlike nearby Fulwell, Roker and Whitburn, was largely without residential population until the 1930s).
Was Seaburn not in the South Shields constituency before the Sunderland boundary extended outwards in 1935?
I’m sad to report that former Loony candidate here, Rosalyn Warner, has died.
I assume she had been too unwell to contest the recent election, hence the withdrawal of her candidacy.
Yes, James. Pete Whitehead brought the sad news to our attention on the Haltemprice and Howden thread. It is believed that she took her own life. Her funeral is being held tomorrow.
She had actually made several entertaining comments on the Haltemprice and Howden thread during the 2008 by-election campaign as “Mad Cow Girl”.
Sorry, I hadn’t realised that it had been reported on that thread. Very sad news indeed.
I read the story in tonight’s Echo and feel very sad. Politics can be a very serious business at times and colourful candidates such as Rosalyn can lift ones spirits no end.
I was very saddened to read VOTEDAVE post on the circumstances of her death, this only make the event even more tragic.
R.I.P. Rosalyn, you will be missed.
I too am saddened by the news of Rosalyn’s death which I have just picked up and agree with Bob that sometimes it is the marginal candidates who enliven a campaign and bring a bit of fun into our (mostly) serious and earnest political lives.
This Rosalyn did with style – Farewell girl.
It is sad news.
sorry to hear about the death of your friend if you actually knew her – as I posted elsewhere she provided some of the much needed opposition at Haltemprice and Howden in 2008 (although I support David Davis).
On this seat, this was the first inkling that the Conservative advance was being “checked” although it’s a respectable result that got talked up a bit much beforehand.
well it was respectable, but the swing was no better than the national average. And the seat is no nearer to being a true marginal.
It’s 9.8% closer to being one.
But it isn’t a marginal.
Lee Martin did rather well in this seat, he should try and get selected for a safer tory seat next time. It’s more than likely that Sunderland will be reduced back to 2 seats after the next boundary review, which will be bad news for the tories if the new boundaries are anything like the old ones.
“it’s more than likely that Sunderland will be reduced back to 2 seats ”
If we’re going for around 76,000 electorate constituencies, It will probably be 2 seats fully contained into Sunderland council boundary + a third cross borough constituency
The May 2010 Sunderland electorate was 212,124. Central was already almost 75,000.
On the Sunderland Central result, I think the result looked less promising in the aftermath because all the hype it went on it before the vote.
Funny how the media ramped this for the conservatives at the GE and yet it turned out to be one of Labour’s better results in the GE in terms of holding vote share.
Meant ‘NE’ instead of GE.
After the very disappointing GE result I fear losses in the coming council elections for us,given the backlash against the necessary cuts following Labours outrageous over spending and borrowing,
Sunderland people should look at other Tory run councils,very efficient,well run,value for money.Can it happen here ? Maybe in time,but locals need to wake up and shape up and see what is going on,get out of your always vote Labour mood..
Our City is a poor relation to our near neighbours and after years and years of Labour rule surely we should at last hold the council,who have failed miserably under bothTory and Labout governments to task ?
They let us down.Sunderland desreves better,so all you people who write to the Sunderland Echo complaining that we are second best to Newcastle for restaurants,pubs,social scene etc and all the others who compare Seaburn /Roker to South Shields, remember who runs the Counci,yes years of Labour rule l. Do you want to really change ? If so you know what to do kick the incumbents out !
A year after the intense campaign by the Tories in this seat and an outstanding candidate Andy should realise that Sunderland Central and indeed the two other Sunderland constituencies are firmly Labour and will remain so. The recent Local Elections have proved that with Labour gains in what were formerly regarded as Tory Wards. Lee Martin was defending his Barnes seat and survived but without him it too would have been lost. National politics do, without doubt, influence the Locals but now having 56 Labour councillors I think proves the point that the majority of Sunderland people do not share Andy’s assessment of the City.
No doubt in many labour scottish constienties the same words were being said last wedensday though the words will have seen pretty hollow the next day no party should give up on an area and no party has a divine right to rulei n the south north or middle.
“They let us down.Sunderland desreves better,so all you people who write to the Sunderland Echo complaining that we are second best to Newcastle for restaurants,pubs,social scene etc and all the others who compare Seaburn /Roker to South Shields, remember who runs the Counci,yes years of Labour rule l. Do you want to really change ? If so you know what to do kick the incumbents out !”
Who runs South Tyneside? Labour
Who runs Gateshead? Labour
Who run Newcastle from 1973-2004 and now again? Labour
It’s counterintuitive to say Sunderland people should vote for the Tories to make Sunderland more like our neighbours.
These excellent Tory authorities of which you talk probably include Hammersmith and Fulham, whose cuts long preceded that of the coalition, but at what social cost?
As for Lee Martin being “outstanding”….all hat and no cattle is a kind interpretation of the man. Talks a good talk but what has he ever achieved?
So FWM,yes Sunderland people have returned again a Sunderland Council run by Labour,but again I must say that is because it is inherrant and in the blood to do so.So be it,but as you quite rightly illustrate our other local run councils are Labour too and that is my point and the crux of the matter.Sunderland under Labour,by anyone with an understanding of the area,is a poor relation to Gateshead,Newcastle and South Tyneside.Dare I say it Easington District now with the clean beaches etc and with plans for a film industry are catching us up.I hate to say it we have a shanty looking City Centre with dozens and dozens of boarded up shops,a desperately poor looking seaside (which should be the best on our local patch).We have to hold our locally elected MP’s and Councillors to task We are the poor relation and you have to admit it is Labour in power locally since the 50s that has got us here.Hats of to your local Labour colleagues who have done a better job,wish they lived here.The truth often hurts ? I have been honest,can you local Sunderland Labour suppporters do likewise about Sunderlands obvious lagging behind and relative lack of prosperity ? More than 50 years of Labour rule under nationally run both tory and Socialist camps but we are second best,summed up by two of my children who have moved out of Sunderland to the far more lively,exciting and vibrant Newcastle.Hurts to say it but true.