Talk:Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011

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Can constituencies cross ward boundaries?[edit]

"Removing the Boundary Commission for England's requirement to keep within English counties and allowing it the right to consider crossing the boundaries of the regions used for elections to the European Parliament in its processes."

The 1986 act requires constituencies to be built out of whole numbers of local government wards. Does anybody know if this is proposed to be repealed? If not, them it's going to be impossible to build constituencies of the right size. Sheffield has wards of 14,000 electors +/- 5% since the ward redrawing in 2004. A constituency of 77,000 requires 5.5 wards.

Jgharston (talk) 18:22, 30 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Good question! Given the size and shape of wards in Birmingham and Sheffield, Leeds also, it seems highly likely that ward splitting will happen in England. I'm not happy about it but it looks impossible with the very strict new rules do draw constituencies otherwise....doktorb _words^deeds 05:39, 1 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

English counties can and are redrawn from time to time and could be make to match parliamentary boundaries. The border between say England and Scotland is however fixed and parliamentary seats should not cross this border. Cornwall wishes its border to remain at the Tamar. If it has population worth say 1.49 seats it should get 1 seat, while if it has population worth 1.51 seats it should get 2 seats. Cannot have it both ways; fixed boundary and narrow tolerance. Tabletop (talk) 23:32, 1 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

BTW, the names of many constituencies such as Altrincham and Sale West suggest that they are cobbled together a bit.

Constituencies are routinely redrawn, merged, etc - hence conflated names. Constituency numbers in ciies have dropped over the decades as populations in the centre fall and people move out to the suburbs. The ConDems are just looking here to gerrymander as they remain desparate to cling on to power IMHO.91.104.193.126 (talk) 22:31, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Boundaries are drawn by the independent Boundary Commissions. The Conservative-led coalition have nothing to do with it. doktorb _words^deeds 22:42, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Wards can be split under the old legislation, as Derryaghy ward in Lisburn is split between Belfast West and Lagan Valley. The 1986 act actually only recommends that the Boundary Commissions do not split wards in Northern Ireland, and says nothing about wards in the rest of the UK. Warofdreams talk 00:40, 16 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Bias[edit]

This article carries mention of Labour opposing the change because it will benefit the conservatives, whereas in actual fact it will make the boundaries more fair for everyone and carries no mention of the current system benefitting Labour through safe seats and already unfair boundaries. Labour would obviously oppose a bill that would reduce their MPs in their safe constituencies but there is no mention of how the change will benefit every other party by making the boundaries more equal in size. I would like this subtle bias corrected to mention both sides. Thanks Jenova20 12:28, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It is certainly the argument made on behalf of the Government that the change would make boundaries fairer, but that is a point of view and not an unambiguous fact. The claim, sometimes implicit and sometimes explicit, that Labour wins many more seats than the Conservatives largely because Labour constituencies have on average smaller electorates, is not well founded: see "How Important Are Variations in Constituency Size?" by Galina Borisyuk, Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher for an investigation into it. (This review was published in a peer-reviewed journal.) The conclusion is that constituency size comes into it, but is a minor factor, and the major factors are not going to be affected. Sam Blacketer (talk) 23:11, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Unambiguous facts include the over-representation of Scotland, Wales, and some inner cities. Considering the close result of the 2013 election, the conclusion cited above is clearly wrong. What affects the choice of government is not whether or not a landslide victory results in a majority of 200 or 300, which is what I suspect the 'major/minor' factor conclusion is all about. The key results are those which elections which are closely balanced, and in those, there ain't no minor factors. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gravuritas (talk • contribs) 21:31, 19 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Update[edit]

Badly needs an update to reflect the fact that these changes will not now take place. Valenciano (talk) 11:00, 31 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

'Fulfils a Conservative aim'[edit]

Putting together the ONS population statistics together with the LSE blog entry is a form of original research by synthesis; on an issue like this a direct approach is needed with sourcing. The LSE didn't state in terms that Scotland and Wales were over-represented, but that "Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales also had smaller constituencies on average than England". In the case of Scotland that was not due to specific over-representation (it had, since the Scotland Act 1998, the same electoral quota as England) but to the fact that the previous rules did not treat equalising the electorate as the sole consideration and allowed the Boundary Commissions to depart from it if there were "special geographical considerations", and the sparse population of the Scottish highlands and islands was a special consideration. Had the new review concluded, it's quite possible that the specific exception of na h-Eileanan an Iar and Orkney and Shetland would have meant Scottish constituencies had even lower average electorates than in England.

The LSE blog says nothing about over-representation of inner cities, and it ascribes the Conservatives' disadvantage to "the current system for redrawing constituency boundaries every ten years" rather than to systematic over-representation. Sam Blacketer (talk) 09:46, 20 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Smaller constituencies = over representation, clearly, and attempting to claim that they are different points is a distinction without a difference. "However, in order to reduce[my emphasis] Scotland's historical over representation in the House of Commons, Scotland's share of constituencies was reduced from 72 to 59, in accordance with proposals drawn up by the Boundary Commission for Scotland"^[1]

Your statement above on Scotland's 'specific' over-representation is incorrect. I think you mean that Scotland is not over-represented by design, but that doesn't alter the fact that Scotland is, specifically, over-represented.

I hope that deals with my edit with regards to Scotland, and the situation with Wales is the same in terms of electorate per constituency. I can trawl around looking for a direct quote on Wales if you wish, but given that the Scotland point is proven and cited, I suggest that it shouldn't be necessary and that having the edit only refer to Scotland would be misleading by omission. As far as I am aware, the LSE blog may be incorrect with regard to N Ireland. With regard to inner cities, I can reinstate the edit without inner cities if you wish, until I find a suitable ref.

Gravuritas (talk) 12:42, 20 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I have an issue with that section, too. It skirts into WP:OR, and editors are discouraged from using blogs as sources, never mind ONS statistics which don't explicitly conclude the point being made. doktorb _words^deeds 12:27, 21 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@Doktorbuk- I think your edit is an improvement on the way I had it. The problem with the article before my edit is that, though a lot of work had gone into the article by others, the reasons for the act were incomplete. As the reasons were incomplete, the reasons for the delay in 2013 were also not apparent, and the whole situation became simply mystifying if a reader's only source of info was Wikipedia. I assume, as a new editor (is that the right term?) that mystified readers are not a good thing. I do accept your points that the sources could be improved.

Gravuritas (talk) 14:18, 21 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

References

^ Wikpedia politics of Edinburgh.

Expansion of referendum section[edit]

I am intending to greatly expand the section regarding the AV referendum during the course of today (7 October 2017) and over the next few days as the current text regarding the referendum is simply not informative enough and needs more information to be added. (MOTORAL1987 (talk) 11:24, 7 October 2017 (UTC))[reply]

Referendum results[edit]

There should be some mention of the fairly obvious fact that many voters saw the referendum as being about Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats (with respect to the coalition with the conservatives, U-turn on student fees etc), as much or more as they did as being about fairly esoteric voting details... AnonMoos (talk) 09:58, 27 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

[1] Wikpedia politics of Edinburgh.

[1]