Adopt a Constituency

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Just had this idea; it might be an idea for non-U.K members pick a constituency to follow/actual candidate to support.

Basically if you have any links with a constituency, choose that one, find out who the candidates are and choose one to "vote" for; if not post a brief description of the State Senate district you live in (they're a bit smaller than constituencies, but it's the closest match) and it should be easy(ish) to find somewhere similer to it.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Immy, WMS: I'll work it out tomorrow morning after I've had some sleep

[Filuwaúrdjan]

A seat between Swansea and Cardiff on the coast, but nearer Swansea then Cardiff? That's where my Grandma was born.

That would be in either the Bridgend or Aberavon seats

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Immy: after looking up Lewiston (and a couple of nearby counties) a seat that comes to mind is Clwyd South; a very rural seat in Northeast Wales, history of mining (in this case coal rather than metals) and other resource industries, outlying hill farms, tourism increasingly important (Llangollen is in the seat for one thing), Non Conformists (ie: Evangelicals) strong in most of the area.

M.P since 1987 (when it was Clwyd South West) is Martyn Jones (Labour) a former micro-biologist, a member of CND and on the left of the Labour Party. He's got a reputation as an effective constituency M.P. He wears a bow-tie.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

is either interesting electorally?

Er... no. Aberavon has been Labour since the '20's (maybe a few years before) even during the '31 wipeout.
Bridgend (a coastal industrial area) was created in '83 and somehow managed to elect a Tory. Normal service resumed in '87 when Win Griffiths (a lay preacher) won it for Labour. He's standing down this election. The next M.P will be Madeleine Moon a fairly prominant local politician from Porthcawl.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

WMS: Reading West seems to fit your part of the West Side best; it's basically a lower middle class (U.K definition) suburban area with a load of council estates and some semi-rural upper middle class areas thrown in for good measure. The local economy is booming and the area is still growing fairly quickly.
By rights the seat should be a marginal (and was in 1997) but it's (very popular) Labour M.P, Martin Salter (a populist left winger) has turned it into something of a personal fiefdom and nearly tripled his majority in 2001 (it's now 21%) and is very safe.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

My fallback is Cornwall, from dad's dad's side of the family.  (OLD) Mining areas on the north coast? He was a mine operator. We don't KNOW he was from the north coast of Cornwall, but there is a lot of 'Bartlett' presence there. They went to Cornwall from Swansea a few hundred years ago. Anyway.....

The old tin mining area is mostly in Falmouth & Cambourne, although there are parts in St Ives IIRC.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

IIRC Bridgend does have some posh-ish outer suburban places as well...though not enough for the Tories to still be a force these days. Would explain how they won it in 1983, though.

Normally those areas are only enough to prevent Bridgend having the sort of jaw dropping Labour majorities seen in the Valleys; the Tories won Bridgend in '83 because the SDP polled well (23%).

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That was the official reason. The real reason was because she got herself in a power struggle with Salter and lost... she also made allies with some Tories on the borough council.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I wish Dunwich was still a constituency.  :-)

Haha!

There's a list of all the seats in the pre-'32 Parliaments HERE.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I wish Dunwich was still a constituency.  :-)

Isn't Dunwich the rotten borough that continued to send two MPs to Parliament even after most of the village had been lost to sea erosion?

Yep

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Are there any similar constiutencies that the Lib Dem is in a close battle with someone?

Not really.

The only other seat that's similer is Meirionnydd Nant Conwy, but it's very, very different in another way; pretty much everyone speaks Welsh there and a combination of that and the decision of the City of Liverpool to flood a small village in the constituency to make a resivoir (I'm not making this up) means the seat (formerly just Merionth) has been protest voting for Plaid Cymru for the past 30 years. Before then it had been a rare Lab/Lib marginal (the Labour voting slate mining/quarrying areas against the Liberal voting hill farmers) but since then the Labour vote has more or less been halved (they also suffered negative boundary changes when Nant Conwy was added in 1983) and the Liberals have completely collapsed... I think they may still have a rural councillers in the seat but that's about it.
The seat has a tiny electorate (32,000 in 2001) and certain people (myself included) think that the inclusion of Nant Conwy but not the rest of the Conwy valley was basically a gerrymander. The seat is being abolished after this election.
Plaid should hold (although the tiny electorate means they can't *really* take it for granted, especially with the flat out insane remarks the incumbent has taken to saying recently) and if there's a poster from rural Quebec, this is the seat you should adopt

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Alright...I know of a few UK constituencies...but I'd like one that's like my area.

County: Bucks (2nd richest in the state)
State Senate District: 6th
State Senator: Robert "Tommy" Tomlinson (R), a liberal Republican, often sides with the Democratic Governor on some issues.

PA 6-Lower Bucks (South Central, Southwest Bucks) is home to older suburbs of Philadelphia, but also some very wealthy areas that were recently added to the district to boost Republican support.

median household income ranges from roughly 45000 (for some of the very blue collar areas, still not too shabby)-70000+(in the newer suburbs).

There used to be a very strong union presence in this area as many areas were homes for steel mill workers, but the area now is definitely service based (malls, large shopping centers, with stores like Barnes and Noble, Target, Walmart, Borders etc)...and lately I've noticed a ton of starbucks popping up.

Any idea?

I have a few ideas, but I need to know one other thing; how large is the Jewish population?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Ceredigion I guess (interestingly it's also in Wales). Has two universities; Aberystwth (which is fairly large) and Lampeter (which is extremely small and interesting in several other ways) and a lot of hill farms spread over a very remote and very rural interior. There used to be some lead mines in the NE of the seat.
It's also coastal, which doesn't fit at all, but it's as close as I can find.

It was a Liberal seat from 1885 until Labour won two fluke terms in '66 and '70 (seeing as the only sizeable Labour vote is in Lampeter I still don't understand how it happend) before reverting to the Liberals in 1974. It was the biggest shock of 1992 when Plaid came from *fourth* place to take the seat (although as it's 60% Welsh speaking maybe it shouldn't have been much of a shock) and it's been theirs ever since.
It's currently pretty marginal, and the LibDems think they have a good chance of winning it back.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Only from 1885?

My mistake; it's 1855...

[quote[Anyways, isn't Aberystwyth Uni Welsh-speaking?

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Bi-lingual

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True. Most of Wales is nice IMO

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Bullmoose: Bury South would seem to fit best (actually none of Bury proper is in the seat, it should actually be called Prestwich & Radcliffe...) although the cheaper homes were built for cotton mill workers rather than steelworkers (this being Lancashire after all) and the area isn't doing as well economically as Bucks county.
The seat has a high Jewish population (by U.K standards) and is a pretty safe Labour seat nowadays.

Earl: need to know one thing; is part of the seat a mostly gentrified inner city area, or is it all suburban?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I'll adopt Boston and Skegness where a branch of my family lived some 500 years ago.  Also one of closest races the last election.  I'll have to read up on this more.  I will be supporting a Labour pickup.

Very interesting race that one; the area is extremely eurosceptic and the local authority gave UKIP one of their best showings in the Euro elections.
There's speculation that if they poll strongly, they could easily let Labour in on a split vote. Tories have also been hurt by the antics of Lincolnshire County Council...

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It's mostly suburban. Few places in Canada can be considered "inner city" at least not by American terms.

By inner city I don't mean ghetto; I mean more a very urban area, part of the orginal urban core basically.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

So a predominantly middle class (U.K definition), inner suburban seat with a fairly large minority population but a small Jewish population?
Should be able to find somewhere.
Wait a sec...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Birmingham Hall Green would seem to fit best (although, weirdly, nowhere really fits all that well).
It's mostly inter-war suburbia, is mostly middle class and has the lowest minority population of the Brum seats (not including Sutton Coldfield o/c) but still much higher than the national average (17% of the seats population is from a minority group).
It used to be a safe Tory seat (60% in 1970) but fell to Labour for the first time since '45 in 1997; and by a large margin.
The majority (over 20% in 2001) will probably fall, but Labour would be very unlikely to lose the seat.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I should let you know that my riding has the highest Arab population in Ontario- possibly in Canada.

Only part of the U.K with more than a tiny Arab population is in Westminster LBC (in the part in the Regents Park & Kensington North seat IIRC) but that's inner city. Interestingly there's a fairly large Jewish community in the same area and there's very little trouble between the two.

Hall Green (like all the Brum seats) does have a large Muslim population; mostly Pakistani though.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Al and Lewis once said my area was like Cambridge.

I said Cambridge 50 odd years ago IIRC. Areas changed a lot with silicon fen and all that.

Trying to find a good fit for your area is pretty hard actually. Stirling perhaps?