Monday 5 June 2017

Sunderland - First to reveal all 2017 election

The premier league relegation hit Brexiteers have been the first declared UK election result of the night for six years running.
Houghton and Sunderland South will be an early, if not the earliest result on Thursday/Friday. 
 Image result for bbc election 2015 graphic Houghton & Sunderland South

This is Labour heartland. 13,000 labour majority in Labour's unsuccessful 2015 election. 
An increase of almost 5% for Ned Miliband, over the Gordon Brown election.

Its also Brexit territory. In 2015 UKIP came second and won 8200 votes on the appeal of leaving the EU. That was up from a lowly 1,000 in 2010.
It was also the first big wobble result on the actual referendum night. Coming out against party wishes, ignoring tribal voting and declaring for leave.

Tories, pushed to third place with a respectable 7,000 were actually 3% down and set the alarm bells ringing in Cameron's HQ on election night. 

What fortified team Dave moments later was the realisation that the Liberal democrats had utterly collapsed and gone from 5,500 votes, 2010,  to only 750 and had lost their deposit.
It was probably as early as this that Lynton Crosby whispered to Cameron, 'You owe me a knighthood.'

Two years later and none of the three main party leaders have survived. Its a very different battle for very different ideas. The polls, wrong in 2010, are now ranging so widely as to be useless for predictions. Its anything from a Corbyn/SNP coalition to a 120 seat Tory majority.

Sunderland, with its core labour support. Its steady level of 1/3 Tory support. Its UKIP upsurge and its Liberals implosion SHOULD tell us all we need to know about the election results.


  • If Corbyn is heading for a massive defeat, Labour share should drop, even though a defeat in this seat would be incredible. 
  • If UKIP are not finished forever they must do well here. If they don't, expect them to be wiped away completely. 
  • If UKIP have suffered losses we should see where the Kipper votes have gone to. They are expected to break 25% lab. 50% Tory. 25% other or nothing.
  • The Liberals must do better than a lost deposit. If they aren't into the 2,000 then the gamble they made on campaigning could be deemed to have failed.
  • Though with pro Brexit being a major topic here, any 4 figure result might actually be OK for them.

Competition time.

Guess the votes in Sunderland South.
Predictions in the comments. Let us see who is more accurate. Pollsters or public.

LAB HOLD

Results 2015


Labour, with candidate Bridget Phillipson, have the following results:

  • 21,218 total votes taken.
  • 55.1% share of the total vote
  • +4.8% change in share of the votes


UKIP, with candidate Richard Elvin, have the following results:
  • 8,280 total votes taken.
  • 21.5% share of the total vote
  • +18.8% change in share of the votes


Conservative, with candidate Stewart Hay
, have the following results:
  • 7,105 total votes taken.
  • 18.5% share of the total vote
  • -3.0% change in share of the votes


Green Party, with candidate Alan Robinson
, have the following results:
  • 1,095 total votes taken.
  • 2.8% share of the total vote
  • +2.8% change in share of the votes


Liberal Democrat, with candidate Jim Murray
, have the following results:
  • 791 total votes taken.
  • 2.1% share of the total vote
  • -11.9% change in share of the votes

Change compared with 2010

11 comments:

mike fowle said...

UKIP are in a sort of limbo at the moment, and many UKIP supporters will lend their votes to the Tories for the sake of Brexit. So no conclusions can be drawn about the future of UKIP until the position with Brexit is final and clear.

dustybloke said...

Labour 24,000
UKIP 0
Conservative 4,000
Greens 2,000
LD 5,000

dearieme said...

David Moyes (- 10,000)

Steven_L said...

It's a tricky one this. On the one hand, Sunderland is full of people who would vote to build more council houses and nationalise the railways and power stations.

But on the other hand they tend to be a tad islamosceptic round those parts and may find some of Corbyns' acquaintances a little bit distasteful.

Money and economics v soul and ideology

I wouldn't like to try and predict which way their pens will actually go on the day.

Anonymous said...

Never good at these predictions, but will fling my hat in nonetheless.

Labour hold, number of votes crated though:

Labour: 16000
Conservative: 12000
Green: 1000
UKIP: 500
LibDems: 500

Have to say, I'm looking more forward to the actual results coming in that whoever is actually governing afterwards. Got a few real ales in to keep me going through the night, and I've hidden all the bleach for when the godawful realisation hits we've got got May or Corbyn in charge for the next few years...

andrew said...

Complex drivers in both directions

Lab 22000
Con 14000

UKIP 2000
GP 1000
LibD 1000

Nick Drew said...

Labour 19,000
Cons 12,000
UKIP 1,000
LibDem 500
Green 500

Timbo614 said...

Ooohh a competition, I like a good competition.
RIP Peter Sallis)

LAB HOLD[flashing]: 19,520
CON [not flashing]: 13,481
UKIP [definitey not flashing]: 1,904
LIB [single recovery flash]: 2,489
GREEN [flash is not installed]: 1,097

This result was attained from the TOP poll (Timbo's Opnion Poll. Number of particiopants (who expressed an opinion) was 1).

CityUnslicker said...

I broadly go with BQ - except I for the lib dems its over, less than they got last time.

Anonymous said...

I'll give it a go;

Labour's share of the vote will drop; they'll give up the 2015 near 5% rise, possibly as much as 10%.

That means they'll hold the seat, with an effective floor of about 17,000 votes.

The Greens have probably hit their ceiling, so they'll get around 1,000 votes, same as 2015.

The Lib-Dem support hasn't bottomed out, and Farron's campaign has nothing to offer to the electorate, but ~800 votes is an irrelevance anyway, so put them at about 600.

That leaves a maximum of about 4,000 votes up for grabs between the Conservatives​ and UKIP. UKIP can't repeat the 2015 ~20% rise, so they have to top out at 10,000 max. The Conservative campaign has been bloody awful, but they'll probably recover the 3% vote share they lost in 2015, plus a bit, topping out at 11-12,000.

That'll result in the Labour majority halving to around 6-7,000.

That all said; the Leave majority in the region was quite high; depending on how that splits out in a GE, I wouldn't be surprised if the Labour majority was a lot narrower, which means I shouldn't be surprised if Labour did lose the seat.

Bill Quango MP said...

Anon- You've talked your self into a different position from your starting point.

We shall see in a few hours time.