Before "Essex Man"

As we wait to discover whether the election will indeed be held on the apparently pre-ordained date of 3 May, or whether the ravages of Foot and Mouth disease will eventually force a postponement, a bit of electoral trivia in answer to a question that I was asked last week. Which is the most typical constituency in the country?

Of course, there are several answers to that question depending on how we define our terms. If we simply want the pivotal seat, the one with the median outcome between the Conservatives and Labour and so the one that, assuming perfect uniform swing, would be sure to be won by the biggest party nationally, the answer is Warrington South, as detailed in this column a few weeks ago. [Some Basic Electoral Numbers].

However, you could argue that Warrington South is not really typical electorally. For one thing, it under-represents the Liberal Democrats. (Not very surprising, in a Tory-Labour marginal, of course.) For another, because the electoral system is currently tilted in Labour's favour, the Tories need to be well ahead of Labour in votes to overtake them in seats, so although Warrington South is the pivotal seat, Labour's lead there in 1997, 19.6%, was considerably more than its lead nationally, 13%. (That 6.6% gap is a measure of the extra ground the Tories have to make up.) If we simply look for the constituency whose vote shares for the three main parties most closely mirror those of the whole of Great Britain, Watford is the winner, followed by Wansdyke; if we also demand that our typical constituency has a typical share for the "other" parties, Exeter noses ahead. But, on the other hand, a uniform swing big enough for the Tories to win all three of these seats would still leave Labour the largest party.

A different question is which seat has the best "track record". The champion bellwether constituency in Britain, by far, is Gravesham. As Simon Henig and Lewis Baston point out in Politico's Guide to the General Election, Gravesham (or Gravesend, as the constituency was called until 1983) has only failed to be won by the party going on to form the government on two occasions since the First World War, 1929 and 1951 - and in both those elections the party that formed the government had in fact been defeated on the popular vote, and Gravesend went to the party that had most votes nationally. Since 1955, Gravesend's record is entirely unblemished. The runner-up for the bellwether prize is Luton South (successor to the Luton East seat that existed from 1974 to 1983 and before that to the single Luton seat), which last failed to go to the governing party when Charles Hill, the "radio doctor" and head of the BBC, won it for the Tories in 1950. Third place should probably go to Medway (previously Rochester and Chatham), which fell the right way at each election since 1959 except for February 1974 - which, as you will remember, was another election when the party winning most votes nationally did not win most seats.

But how about the most typical demographically? Suppose we take some of the most relevant percentage figures from the last Census and match each constituency to the national profile. Of course, the exact result will depend on which figures you throw into the cocktail - for this analysis I selected forty different variables measuring factors such as age, tenure, car ownership and ethnic group, and subjected them to a sum of squares analysis. The most typical seat by quite a way, somewhat improbably, was Newport West. Electorally typical it certainly isn't - although the Tories managed to win it in their high tide year of 1983, it would certainly be considered rock-safe Labour at the moment. However, it would be foolish to miss the excuse for telling the little-known story of how Newport nearly lost its right to an MP altogether. In 1948, when the Representation of the People Act which set up the Boundary Commissions was going through Parliament, Monmouthshire was still technically part of England for some legal purposes, and it was usual to refer to "Wales and Monmouthshire" to make it quite clear that the county was not to be treated as part of England. The draftsmen of the 1948 Act, however, gave the Boundary Commission for Wales responsibility for "Wales and the administrative county of Monmouthshire"; it was only at the last moment that it dawned on someone that Newport, being a county borough, was not part of the administrative county (i.e. the part governed by the county council), and the act had to be amended by statutory order - if it had not been, it is not entirely clear whether Newport would have come under the Boundary Commission for England, or would have lost its MP altogether at the next redistribution.!

But if Newport is a surprising pick as the most demographically typical seat, in second place on the list and the most typical seat in England (excluding Monmouthshire!) is Gravesham. Again. This is not the first time that Gravesend has won this particular honour. Before the election of 1970, Ivor Crewe and Clive Payne analysed the data from the 1966 sample census, their conclusions being published in a Sunday Times article (23 May 1970) entitled "Gravesend Man". (The full details are given in Crewe and Payne's appendix to Butler and Pinto-Duschinsky's "The General Election of 1970", Macmillan, 1971). This inspired the BBC to conduct a last-minute poll in Gravesend, which predicted a 4.4% swing. In fact, the swing in Gravesend when the results were declared was 4.9%, and the national swing 4.8% - not a bad bit of prediction!

And, as we have seen, more than quarter of a century later, it is still demographically the most typical constituency in England, and still retains its status as an almost perfect bellwether. Rest assured that MORI will NOT be decamping to Kent and basing its entire polling programme in Gravesham! But Gravesend Man still looks worth keeping an eye on.