If the US were the 5th British region, would it be a blue region?

[Alcibiades]

Well, for fun I decided to take the UK 2019 results (minus Northern Ireland) and try and shoehorn them into the US House of Representatives constituencies.

There result is a bit dumb but it's not like the premise of this thread can ever be simulated accurately so here it goes



(click to enlarge)

Believe it or not, there is actually a concrete methodology I used for this. Whether it was the best methodology or not is up for debate of course:

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1. Take the 3 most Hispanic Districts in California, give them to the Plaid Cymru equivalent

2. Take 3 random "border" districts in Texas, give them to the Conservative Party

3. Take the wealthiest district in Texas, and the El Paso district (to try and simulate the LD strentgh in the "highlands"). Give them to the Lib Dems

4. Give the SNP equivalent every other district in Texas

5. Order the remaining US Congressional districts by household income. Give any Dem-held districts that are among the 218 poorest districts in the US to the Labour Party

6. The Labour party is still 73 seats short of what they "should" have. Give the Labour Party the 36 poorest Republican held seats, and the 37 next poorest Democratic held seats (even if these Dem seats are richer than the US average)

7. Give every remaining district to the Conservative Party

Tory San Francisco, Boston, Portland and Seattle 🤔

[Alcibiades]

Tory San Francisco, Boston, Portland and Seattle

Don't forget about Tory Denver and DC

Tbh this is an effect of me using household income to try and estimate the fact that Labour tends to win in higher deprivation level/poorer constituencies. Which in a US context ends up meaning that much of the normally Titanium R rural South ends up as Labour (since it is a poor area of the US after all!), while most US big cities (which aren't necessarily wealthy, but do have high incomes because of the high CoL)

Indeed, if I use such a similar methodology for the UK, I'd end up with lots of wealthy constituencies in London that are held by Labour and that by my methodology should be "Tory" because they have high incomes.

Some of these constituencies that ""should"" be Tory based on income but are held by Labour include Battersea, Putney, Westminster North or Hampstead & Kilburn; the latter 2 of which weren't even marginal seats in 2019

On a similar but reversed situation, a bunch of poor Tory constituencies that my methodology would have assigned to Labour would include Blackpool South, Great Yarmouth, Walsall North or Stoke-on-Trent Central; again with 2 constituencies here not even being competitive.

Something to note is that Labour win very few rural constituencies, poor or not, and those that they do/did generally had mining or heavy industry. But in general, there is nowhere near as much rural poverty in the UK as the US.

(Side note: Alabama is also very disturbing to me. The northernmost seat (the 5th district) would probably be the most Labour after the VRA 7th district, due to its TVA and union heritage.)