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Labour vote fragments in Birmingham

An initial glance at the results for Birmingham shows the Labour vote fragmenting.

For example they lost the Moseley and Kings Heath seat to the Lib Dems. Labour had only 31% of the vote. However, the opposition to Labour was fragmented and we had about 33% of the vote - enough to win, however.

Because of the boundary changes comparisons need to be made to the all up elections, but that is relatively difficult because sometimes parties (eg UKIP, Green, BNP) only put up 1 candidate in those situations.

There are two comparison techniques the largest vote technique and the percentage of overall vote technique. Both of these have their problems.

Comments

John Hemming said…
The issue in the inner city is the intervention of Respect. In Lozells Lib Dem and Respect was about 3,000 against Labour 3,300.

In Springfield Labour's majority over Lib Dem was about 500 and Respect got about 1700 votes.

Sparkbrook is more complex.

In Aston the Respect Intervention did not have the same effect, however.

The nature of Inner City politics, however, is that party allegiences are only a part of the story.
John Hemming said…
As far as Nechells is going we are awaiting the result of the Police Investigation.
Simon said…
In John's defence there were some good LD results in wards they were defending - Perry Barr, Selly Oak and Bordesley, all hitherto fairly marginal wards which now look secure for them. However, there's no doubt that their performance in their target seats was fairly disastrous. Even the solitary gain in Moseley was more marginal than it ought to have been.

John's assessment of early yesterday evening that 'this is a very good night for the Alden family' looks a more honest summary.
Simon said…
"Selly Oak and Perry Barr marginal?"

In terms of the gap between third and fourth place in those wards in 2004, yes. Given the solidity of the Labour vote elsewhere you might have expected them to be closer this time. But I'm not interested in talking up the Lib Dems, just pointing out that their results weren't uniformly poor.
Simon said…
Yes, I agree.
John Hemming said…
I have not looked through all of the seats as yet. We have made good progress in terms of support in marginal seats such as Selly Oak and Perry Barr.

Hodge Hill remains a good target seat as do others, but the opposition to Labour was fragmented.
John Hemming said…
If you look at the citywide figures at the equivalent place in the previous parliaments Labour's vote has dropped over 10% and our vote has gone up a bit. The tory vote has also dropped.

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