2010 General Election Results By Ward

Michael Day made this Freedom of Information request to Electoral Commission

Electoral Commission did not have the information requested.

From: Michael Day

1 October 2011

Dear Electoral Commission,

I would like to have the data of the results for the 2010 general
election in every ward by each seat. I assume this data is kept
centrally as both the Guardian
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/...
) and Hope not Hate (table 3
http://www.hopenothate.org.uk/features/a...
) seem to have had access to these results and the data would be
immensely useful for an academic project of mine

Yours faithfully,

Michael Day

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From: Iredia Oboh
Electoral Commission

5 October 2011

Dear Mr Day,

Thank you for your request to the Electoral Commission which has been forwarded to me to respond to.

Please find enclosed a link to our website where you are able to find the results of the 2010 general election. http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/el...

There are a number of files available to download including information on turnout and administrative data such as the number of postal votes issued. You are also able to download the general election results according to constituency area.

Please let me know if you have any further questions.

Kind Regards

Iredia Oboh
Public Information Adviser
3 Bunhill Row
London EC1Y 8YZ
Tel: 020 7271 0592
Fax: 020 7271 0505
Textphone: 18001 020 7271 0592
www.electoralcommission.org.uk
www.aboutmyvote.co.uk

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From: Michael Day

5 October 2011

Dear Iredia Oboh,

Dear Iredia

Thank you for replying so promptly, I appreciate it though I’m
afraid your reply unfortunately did not contain the information I
was looking for. To clarify what I am searching for, I’ll give you
an example. The link you supplied me with allows me for example to
look up the results in each constituency in the general 2010
elections but I wish to see how each specific electoral ward in
each seat voted in the general election in order to analyse the
voting patterns, for example which electoral wards within each seat
are more conservative, which more labour, which more Lib Dem etc.

I wish to be able to look at this data for all 651 parliamentary
seats, and I was under the perception that such data was kept
centrally as both the Guardian and Hope Not Hate seem to have made
use of it in the links that I supplied in my first email.

I would therefore like to ask the following questions

(1 is this data kept at all?

(2 is it kept centrally by the electoral commission or at local
council level for that council’s specific seats?

(3 Would it be at all possible for this information to released
into the public domain?

I look forward to your reply

Yours sincerely,

Michael Day

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From: Iredia Oboh
Electoral Commission

7 October 2011

Dear Mr Day

The answers to your questions are as follows:

1) Individual local Returning Officers count UK Parliamentary votes based on constituency rather than by ward. Many undertake 'mini-counts' as part of this process during which they may, on occasion, record results for whole wards. Returning Officers may publicise such results, but they are not required to.
2) The Electoral Commission doesn't collate such information.
3) The decision to make this information public would be at the discretion of the individual Returning Officer.

Further to this, the Guardian article says that they "modelled the effects of a uniform swing from the old boundaries to new." This suggests that their projections have been reached by using the constituency results of the 2010 general election as if each constituency's result was uniform across the different parts of that constituency.

So if exactly half (by electorate) of an existing constituency called X is recommended for inclusion in a new constituency called N, it is assumed that in a general election under the new boundaries, all the parties would get exactly half the number of votes in the 'X' part of constituency N, as they gained in the whole of constituency X in 2010. So if Party 1 got 10,000 votes in constituency X in 2010, it would be projected to get 5,000 in the part of constituency N which is drawn from the old constituency X, and so on.

However, you may want to contact the Guardian directly to check how they reached their projections.

I hope this has answered your questions.

Kind Regards

Iredia Oboh
Public Information Adviser
3 Bunhill Row
London EC1Y 8YZ
Tel: 020 7271 0592
Fax: 020 7271 0505
Textphone: 18001 020 7271 0592
www.electoralcommission.org.uk
www.aboutmyvote.co.uk

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