92 Labour seats which could fall to UKIP <<< link for Labour seats
A great piece of work from
See more great maps at http://election-data.blogspot.co.uk/
UKIP director of communications Patrick O’Flynn was asked yesterday to reflect on the local elections and to project forward to the general election in 2015. His responses revealed something of the approach the party will use to identify where it intends to focus a good deal of its resources. First he said, “[W]e’re getting the clusters of candidates elected as councillors and the target seat list is becoming clearer before our eyes”. Clearly this is a reference to 2014 but also to last year’s county elections. He went further a little later: “[W]e’re going to be having twenty to thirty target seats [in 2015] and if you put together the clusters [of councillors] we got in last year’s county elections with the ones we’ve got this year, you can have a pretty good guess at where they are”.
Well, I have done just that, and the map below shows the clusters of seats won by UKIP in 2013 and 2014, together with the constituencies in which they sit. The party has won seats elsewhere but I have taken Mr O’Flynn at this word and concentrated on just those seats where the party have won “clusters”. The results reveal a good number of seats around The Wash, areas already identified by Rob Ford and Matthew Goodwin in their book “Revolt on the Right”, but also in Essex, Kent, the Forest of Dean, the Midlands in Dudley, Cannock Chase and Wolverhampton, and further north in and around Rotherham.
The full list (40) of seats is as follows:
Bexhill and Battle, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton, Boston and Skegness, Broadland, Cannock Chase, Castle Point, Chichester, Clacton, Cleethorpes, Dudley North, Eastleigh, East Worthing and Shoreham, Folkestone and Hythe, Forest of Dean, Gosport, Great Grimsby, Great Yarmouth, Harwich and North Essex, Havant, Lewes, Louth and Horncastle, North East Cambridgeshire, North Norfolk, North Thanet, North West Cambridgeshire, North West Norfolk, Penistone and Stocksbridge, Portsmouth North, Rayleigh and Wickford, Rotherham, Rother Valley, Sittingbourne and Sheppey, Southend West, South Basildon and East Thurrock, South Holland and The Deepings, South West Norfolk, Thurrock, Waveney, Wentworth and Dearne, and Wolverhampton South East
I wonder what exactly a target seat means to UKIP. What exactly are they going to be doing in those seats which they are not going to be doing in all the other seats? I suppose investing money is one thing but what exactly are they going to be doing with the money? And what other resources are they going to concentrate on these seats? If they have any sense they will get that number of target seats down to something more realistic. That cluster around the Wash could easily be reduced to a more reasonable number.
ReplyDeleteThis is just the opinion of a blogger - remember UKIP themselves have said they will only target 20 seats.
ReplyDeleteThat was in May. A lot has changed since then and providing UKIP has the resources and suitable candidates it could be realistic to target more than 20 seats. Some of the seats which were Conservative safe seats relied strongly on the personality of a retiring MP such as Louth and Hornacastle. This is an area which until recently thought a foreigner was someone from the next county and has now been inudated by east Europeans. It wil be very interesting.
DeleteNo South West seats surely UKIP have to appeal to the whole country
ReplyDeleteIntriguingly south Thanet isn't on the list despite call me Nige, mines a shandy, Farage is standing there.
ReplyDelete