Wycombe
2010 Results:
Conservative: 23423 (48.64%)
Labour: 8326 (17.29%)
Liberal Democrat: 13863 (28.79%)
UKIP: 2123 (4.41%)
Independent: 416 (0.86%)
Majority: 9560 (19.85%)
Notional 2005 Results:
Conservative: 20235 (46.3%)
Labour: 13224 (30.3%)
Liberal Democrat: 8114 (18.6%)
Other: 2128 (4.9%)
Majority: 7012 (16%)
Actual 2005 result
Conservative: 20331 (45.8%)
Labour: 13280 (29.9%)
Liberal Democrat: 8780 (19.8%)
UKIP: 1735 (3.9%)
Other: 301 (0.7%)
Majority: 7051 (15.9%)
2001 Result
Conservative: 19064 (42.4%)
Labour: 15896 (35.3%)
Liberal Democrat: 7658 (17%)
UKIP: 1059 (2.4%)
Green: 1057 (2.4%)
Other: 240 (0.5%)
Majority: 3168 (7%)
1997 Result
Conservative: 20890 (39.9%)
Labour: 18520 (35.4%)
Liberal Democrat: 9678 (18.5%)
Referendum: 2394 (4.6%)
Other: 837 (1.6%)
Majority: 2370 (4.5%)
Boundary changes:
Profile:
Current MP: Steve Baker (Conservative) Born Cornwall. Former RAF engineer. Associate consultant for the Centre for Social Justice.
Steve Baker (Conservative) Born Cornwall. Former RAF engineer. Associate consultant for the Centre for Social Justice.
Andrew Lomas (Labour) PhD Chemistry student at Oxford University.
Steve Guy (Liberal Democrat) born 1963. Project manager for Virgin Media.
John Wiseman (UKIP)Mudassar Khokar (Independent)David Fitton (Independent)2001 Census Demographics
Total 2001 Population: 100015
Male: 49.1%
Female: 50.9%
Under 18: 24.8%
Over 60: 16.2%
Born outside UK: 14.1%
White: 82.1%
Black: 3.6%
Asian: 11.6%
Mixed: 2%
Other: 0.7%
Christian: 64.2%
Hindu: 0.8%
Muslim: 10.1%
Full time students: 5.2%
Graduates 16-74: 23.4%
No Qualifications 16-74: 23.6%
Owner-Occupied: 73.1%
Social Housing: 15.6% (Council: 11.7%, Housing Ass.: 3.9%)
Privately Rented: 7.7%
Homes without central heating and/or private bathroom: 3.4%
I was certainly on Paul Goodman’s side rather than Paxman and Balls. I should have said he got the appearance of a mauling rather than an actual one.
I don’t really see why he did.
He was angry and refused to be shouted down, the former is not always the best style.
But if he’d done much else Paxman would have just given him the chance to answer two pre-selected questions and Goodman would have had no chance to make his case.
How Balls could sit there in that disgusting smug tone when – it would appear – his politically correctly named department has given public money (in the depths of a recession) to what is (or what was recently) a front organisation of very unpolitcally supporters of correct terrorist thugs and be presented as the winner of the argument, I completely fail to understand.
But he’ll hold his seat (Morley and Outwood) – most likely – by about 2,000. If he had one ounce of honour – he would resign.
Cons Hold= 12,000 maj
Con Hold
Maj 10 300
Con maj 13,000
I got the Lib-Dem leaflet yesterday and it contained smears unlike the Conservative one. I sent an email to Mr Guy and guess what …… his site had a half baked email facility where what one was typing disappeared out of the box!
Says it all really!
Godfrey
West Wycombe Road
Godfrey
What smears are you referring to?
The Lib Dem literature is pretty strongly ‘issue based’.
CON HOLD
That would be something new, having an issue-based leaflet from the Lib Dems! Still waiting for one where I live.
JJB@s prediction from last year:
“Somewhat revised from my earlier,
most likely
- roughly.
Con 24,000
Lab 12,000
LD 7,000
UKIP 3,000″
And the responses:
“June 24th, 2009 at 12:26 amMark Senior
You have to laugh at JJB’s predictions which ignore all the evidence that the Labour vote has collapsed here to fewer than 3,000 votes in the CC elections , As in much of the South , a safe Conservative hold with LibDems moving into a poorish 2nd place .
June 24th, 2009 at 6:41 amRichard
It’s a little ironic that Joe lives in a borough where Labour have been non existant for many years but assumes that they are doing better than the results suggest elsewhere in the country.
Perhaps though it is because Labour already had so few supporters in Twickenham that Joe hasn’t noticed the recent collapse in Labour support which has occurred in many other places.
June 24th, 2009 at 8:27 amPete Whitehead
I have to agree with Mark here (and Richard). I think Labour will certainly recover to some extent from the depths they’ve reached in recent local elections, and the Euros ofcourse, but there is no way they can hold onto as many as 12,000 votes in a seat like this which is barely fewer than in 2005. There probably are some places where |Labour’s vote will hold up a bit or even improve compared with 2005 – generally places where they took a big hit specifically because of the Iraq war so areas like Newham and Tower Hamlets but in southern seats like this their vote is going to collapse1980s style I think.
June 24th, 2009 at 10:24 amRichard
I agree Pete and the problem for Labour is that the areas they will do best in tend to already be safe Labour. Newham, Leicester, inner city Birmingham.”
Labour did fall back more than I thought here
, although I did make a mental note of some of those responses and think a larger drop possible.
I think the Labour vote must be back to about the 1987 level here.
I used to visit High Wycombe quite often between 1997 and around 2001 when my old firm joined up with a smaller firm there, and it always did seem to be a fairly Labour inclined town albeit in a Tory setting, so perhaps I was more influenced by the standing of the party’s from that period.
There are plenty of postings from several others about how the Tories couldn’t win Richmond Park, and Pennistone and Stocksbridge.
challenge in second in Pennistone & Stocksbridge.
This was a very polarising election with Labour falling to pre-Kinnock levels in many areas but increasing its vote in its new heartlands of the cities and Scotland.
Places such as Booker used to be fairly strong for Labour – no longer held.
Richard:
It’ll be interested to see what the experts have to say in the coming months regarding just how polarised an election this was and whether it was the most polarised since 1945.
There’s a High Wycombe in the Hasluck constituency in Western Australia, which is currently one of the 3 seats which are too close to call in the Australian general election and which could decide who becomes prime minister.
The Aussie High Wycombe is apparently just to the east of Perth Airport.
As Disraeli’s home and burial place is in Greater Hughenden ward in Aylesbury, why is there a ward called ‘Disraeli’ in this seat?
It contains the Disraeli monument
Only a 1.2% increase for the Conservatives last May. A bit disappointing. Maybe some unhelpful demographic changes for the Tories in High Wycombe itself.
2.5% according to these figures – but yes, below average.
Although it did improve in 2001 and 2005 better than average,
and after a 13.0% drop in 1997, now stands at an estimated 4.8% below 1992.
Wycombe District looks fairly secure for the Tories, unless there is some unexpectedly poor result circa mid 1990s.
For May,
I’m predicting
Con 42
Lab 12
LD 3
Ind 2
Booker I think will split 1 C, 1 Lab
A truly catastrophic result for the Tories in Hazlemere South, last night, a seat they were defending:
LD 412 (37.7; +19.0)
UKIP 365 (33.4; +33.4)
Con 228 (20.9; -33.8)
Lab 88 (8.1; +8.1)
Majority 47
Turnout not yet known
LD gain from Con
Percentage change is since May 2011.
This shows once again that the LDs are doing much better in Tory areas of the SE than in most of the rest of the country, and also shows how potent UKIP are capable of being in some traditionalist Tory-inclined areas too.
Were there any special factors at work in this ward? The high-speed rail link for example?
“also shows how potent UKIP are capable of being in some traditionalist Tory-inclined areas too”
The Tories will have to start worrying about UKIP soon as we are starting to lose a large amount of votes to them. I do believe that a major local issue must be behind such an awful result.
According to the local paper, the Conservative councillor whose resignation caused this election was arrested last month on suspicion of having child pornography, and the ward’s other Conservative councillor is currently suspended from the party while a message he sent is being investigated. I suspect these events may have affected the result.
“This shows once again that the LDs are doing much better in Tory areas of the SE than in most of the rest of the country”
That wasn’t generally the case in the May local elections.
The swing against them was strong in C/LD areas aswell.
This, however, is an awful result.