Worthing West

[Mark Senior]

  It would be a Con/LibDem contest with Labour around 15% in 3rd .

[boogieeck]

Ah, safe Tory then, as half the Lib em vote defects to Labour.

[Pete Whitehead]

  It would be no surprise to me if the forthcoming boundary review leads to a single Worthing seat with boundaries co-terminous with the Worthing BC boundaries . This would be quite a marginal seat with a Conservative majority of 2-3,000 in 2005/2010 .   

Sounds pretty improbable to me - combined Conservative majority of 23,000 in the two Worthing seats. Even granted that most of Worthing East & Shoreham is in Adur district I can't see the Tory lead being as low as that in Worthing with them building up a 20,000 mahjority in Adur and the relatively small part of Arun included in West

[ajs41ajs]

Why would there need to be significant boundary changes in Worthing when both seats already have about 75,000 voters? The surrounding seats are not short of electors either.

[Mark Senior]

  Worthing West contains the 2 Arun CC wards of East Preston/Ferring and Rustington . These are very strongly Conservative .
   In the Worthing BC wards in 2005 the total votes were
  Con 18,309 LD 16,082
    This years figures for the Worthing DC elections held on GE day were
  Con 23,030 LD 20,185

  ajs ,
        It would be the knock on effects of having to redraw all the other seats in Sussex .

[Pete Whitehead]

   In the Worthing BC wards in 2005 the total votes were
  Con 18,309 LD 16,082
    

That is in the local elections on the same day presumably?  What are the figures when you add in the other wards? Mark knows well the difference between local and general election voting patterns even when on the same day. 
The figures for the wards making up the Watford constituency gave a majority of several thousand for the Lib Dems in both 2005 and 2010.  Does this mean it would be accurate to say that Watford is a Lib Dem seat with a majority of 3-4,000 in 2005/10 ?

[erlend]

While liking the idea of a Worthing seat I would note that on a 600 seat Commons, West Sussex is entitled to 7.91 seats. That suggests to me that if it ends up with 8 seats the BC is likely to go for minimum change.

For the record E Sussex plus unitary Brighton is due 7.73 so I doubt there is grounds for a cross boundary seat.

Sorry Mark.

I would also guess that a 2300 majority on locals would be a little higher on the GE. That said I would not sniff at a 4500 majority when neither half had previously been a target seat.

[Mark Senior]

 Fair comment erlend , except that that I can envisage an Adur/ West Hove seat enabling Worthing to return to it's pre 1997 single member status .  The Brighton/Hove UA is well short of an electorate for 3 seats and the natural links are much stronger between Hove Portslade and Shoreham than with Btighton and areas east .

[erlend]

I have long regarded there as being a conurbation running from Brighton to about Bognor so that makes some sense.

[Darren C]

It would be the knock on effects of having to redraw all the other seats in Sussex .

This is the problem. Ideally Worthing should be one seat coterminus with WBC, but changing it knocks on elsewhere and what to do with Brighton? As I see it, West Sussex would see little change on a 600 HoC.   

[Pete Whitehead]

I don't disagree with Mark's logic of a unified Worthing seat, as existed for many years before 1997, nor of the linkage between Shoreham and Portslade , which is logical.  I also don't disagree that a unified Worthing would be a better Lib Dem prospect than either of the current Worthing based seats (though historically Worthing East & Shoreham should have had strong LD potential in the days when they dominated in Adur).
But I found it slightly irritating that Mark is making this assertion about a parliamentary majority which he actually knows to be untrue, because he will know the difference between the local and general election voting patterns.  This can be shown quite simply from the votes cast in 2005 in the county council and general elections:

Worthing East/Shoreham		CC		GE
Con	17460	39.2%	19548	43.9%
LD	13450	30.2%	10844	24.3%
Lab	9979	22.4%	11365	25.5%
UKIP	1974	4.4%	2109	4.7%
Grn	1645	3.7%	677	1.5%
Worthing West		CC		GE
Con	19619	44.8%	21383	47.6%
LD	13760	31.4%	12004	26.7%
Lab	6753	15.4%	8630	19.2%
Grn	1813	4.1%	0	0.0%
UKIP	1655	3.8%	2374	5.3%
Ind	224	0.5%	550	1.2%
Worthing combined
Con	37079	42.0%	40931	45.7%
LD	27210	30.8%	22848	25.5%
Lab	16732	18.9%	19995	22.3%
Grn	3458	3.9%	0	0.0%
UKIP	3629	4.1%	4483	5.0%
Ind	224	0.3%	1227	1.4%

So there is a clear difference between (in particular) the LD performance in the local and national contest.  Moreover that differential is likely to have been disproportionately present in those areas where there were sitting LD county councillors and/or those which were competitive, and therefore where Labour voters locally will have been tempted to vote tactically.  Those areas are in Worthing rather than in Adur or Arun.

The county council total votes cast in Worthing borough in 2005 and which Mark is citing were as follows:

Con	18540	40.2%
LD	16290	35.4%
Lab	7259	15.8%
Grn	1813	3.9%
UKIP	1655	3.6%
Ind	508	1.1%

People may draw there own conclusions, based on the figures above as to whether a 2,000 vote Conservative margin in the local elections would have been replicated in the parliamentary contests.