United Kingdom Referendum on European Union Membership

[parochial boy]

Opinium poll - 7% of Leave voters and 3% of Remain voters regret their votes.

So we are potentially now at a point where remain would win.

Sigh...

[parochial boy]

You're thinking of Clacton which is in Essex but is in North East Coastal Essex as opposed to the Thames Estuary but the Thames Estuary is indeed one of UKIPs best regions in the country. The reason for this (using generalisations) is largely because South Essex has large proportions of the 'white van man' demographic which is essentially white lower middle class people who typically are small trades people or work in decently paid manual labour jobs (builder, plumber etc.), usually don't have university education, are fiercely patriotic and view immigration as the number one issue facing the country. Thus UKIP's core demographic. This demographic is also very dominant in the London Borough of Havering which unsurprisingly is also UKIP/leaves best in London (in fact many residents of Havering resent being in London at all and still insist they are part of Essex as it was pre 1965). South Essex/Havering is also where the a lot of the white flight from the east end of London has gone.

 These areas of Essex were fairly Labour inclined until they flipped en masse to the Tories under Thatcher, they did return to Labour in the Blair landslides but are currently reliably in the Tory camp with UKIP often coming second (or nearly second).

These are the parliamentary constituencies in Essex if you want to take a look https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Parliamentary_constituencies_in_Essex.

Interesting, as a follow up to the original questions, is there any reason why the Kentish side of the Thames estuary stayed Labour, or at least margin, for much longer?

Places like Gillingham, Chatham and Sheppey still had Labour MPs as late as 2010, long after South Essex (excluding Thurrock) shed its Labour MPs. I guess Medway is a bit more traditional working class than Essex? After all, Chatham is one of the places alleged to be the source of the word "Chav".

And re. St Albans it was only Labour until 2005 not 2010. The 1997 boundary changes were very helpful for Labour though as it moved the extremely wealthy Tory town of Harpenden and surrounding villages into a new Hitchin and Harpenden constituency where the sitting Tory MP for St Albans Peter Lilley stood and easily won even as the reconfigured St Albans constituency fell to Labour. Needless to say it is seat that Labour won't win except with a centrist leader/platform in a complete Tory meltdown.

As far as I am aware, St Albans also has a slightly younger population, and is more of an actual employment centre, than most of the rest of the commuter belt. In a lot of respects, it resembles somewhere like Reading more than somewhere like Hertford, which leads to it having a more substantial Labour vote.

[parochial boy]

So far, it has been down to local authorities to release their results. A few, such as Birmingham, have released ward level data, from which you can infer constituency level results, but most have not. Even there, as postal votes weren't counted at ward level, the numbers won't be completely accurate.

Chris Hanretty has calculated and estimate  of the vote by constituency, but it is an estimate based on demographics only, so could be wrong.

I would say without the slightest shadow of a doubt that Sedgefield votes out, seeing as Newcastle was the only local authority in the North East to vote remain, the rest wasn't even close.

Labour is obviously in a bind at the moment with regards to their traditional vote, although it has been declining for years - both to UKIP and to declining turnout, the BNP, SNP even the Lib Dems before that, which has become a source of major angst to the party.