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Gerrymandering in Leeds

Gerrymandering in Leeds. A postcode lottery. How this Works. For each of the main three political parties we have assumed that the level of support they gained at the local election in May 2007 would remain the same for a general election.

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Gerrymandering in Leeds

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  1. Gerrymandering in Leeds A postcode lottery

  2. How this Works • For each of the main three political parties we have assumed that the level of support they gained at the local election in May 2007 would remain the same for a general election. • Leeds is served by 8 MPs, therefore we have always created 8 constituencies. • There are 33 wards in total that we need to allocate between the 8 constituencies as evenly as possible. This means that there are always 7 constituencies containing 4 Wards each, and one constituency formed from 5 wards

  3. Labour Dominate

  4. Lib Dems gain a seat

  5. Conservatives fight back

  6. Liberals gain a seat from the Conservatives

  7. Evenly Split

  8. Band of gold

  9. Liberals gain strength

  10. Labour weakened

  11. What just happened? Although the voters don't move or change their minds about the party that they are going to vote for, the winners change as the constituency boundaries change. Simply by redrawing the boundaries we can go from Labour having won 7 seats and the Conservatives 1, to the Liberal Democrats winning 3 seats, the Conservatives 2 and Labour only 3.

  12. Why does this happen? Boundaries between constituencies can often just manage to give a party a slim majority where a different arrangement would not. People who vote for a party which narrowly loses will find that their vote is wasted. This doesn't just happen as a result of deliberate tampering, but also occur when the boundaries are drawn up impartially.

  13. What’s the solution? The solution is to switch to a voting system with fewer wasted votes based on multi-member constituencies like the Single Transferable Vote (STV)

  14. Appendix Source Data from the 2007 Local Elections

  15. Ward Map

  16. 2007 Local Election Results – Leeds City Council Only the results of the main 3 parties are shown

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