Mapping UK constituencies by social deprivation

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

Yesterday I saw the following amazing Twitter thread, and today since I was bored I decided to translate that chart into maps.

https://twitter.com/undertheraedar/status/1390632762105806856?s=20

EDIT: Thanks to you all for your compliments and recommendations.

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

UK constituencies by social deprivation (1 is the most deprived decile, 10 is the least deprived decile):

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

UK constituencies by social deprivation and party that holds the seat (1 is still the most deprived decile and 10 is still the least deprived decile). I hope I'll be forgiven for recycling some colours for different parties - I only did for parties which run in separate regions, so the result should be unambiguous:

[Alcibiades]

Great maps! I’ve seen the fascinating graphic which inspired you many times before, but it’s cool to see it mapped out. The multiple indices of deprivation are an interesting measure, and in many ways much more instructive than mere median income which is generally used in the US as the main measure of wealth/poverty. Something to note is, because they weight crime, affluent urban areas will often not score quite as low as their wealth might suggest, due to busy shops and restaurants being magnets for petty crime.

I’ve spoken before about how many Americans on here, when doing the semi-regular “How would the UK vote if it were part of the US” exercise, don’t realise how much more urban the British white working class is than their American counterparts, but looking at these maps, I’ve also realised that the opposite is true. Unlike the UK, the US doesn’t really have any major areas of rural affluence, and its well-off citizens are overwhelmingly concentrated in suburbs and some urban neighbourhoods (although many of the low deprivation Home Counties areas would probably be considered at least exurban in the US, the relative point within the two countries still stands).

[beesley]

Thanks very much. I won't make comments on the content but it's great work and nice to have it mapped out so I don't have to trawl through it so much - it's not so much the individual rankings that matter but which end each seat is.

[Darthpi – Anti-Florida Activist]

The Speaker's party being listed as "Order!" on the Twitter graphic floored me, lol.

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

I’ve spoken before about how many Americans on here, when doing the semi-regular “How would the UK vote if it were part of the US” exercise, don’t realise how much more urban the British white working class is than their American counterparts, but looking at these maps, I’ve also realised that the opposite is true. Unlike the UK, the US doesn’t really have any major areas of rural affluence, and its well-off citizens are overwhelmingly concentrated in suburbs and some urban neighbourhoods (although many of the low deprivation Home Counties areas would probably be considered at least exurban in the US, the relative point within the two countries still stands).

This point is something I do realize but I still find somewhat striking because here in Italy wealth is overwhelmingly just urban - there are a number of exceptions of course, but suburbs as a default are normally poorer than the city they gravitate around, let alone proper rural areas.

[CumbrianLefty]

Yesterday I saw the following amazing Twitter thread, and today since I was bored I decided to translate that chart into maps.

https://twitter.com/undertheraedar/status/1390632762105806856?s=20

EDIT: Thanks to you all for your compliments and recommendations.

"B-b-BuT........tHe ToRiEs ArE nOw ThE wOrKiNg ClAsS pArTy!!!!??!!!!!!1111!!!???!!!"

[LabourJersey]

Yesterday I saw the following amazing Twitter thread, and today since I was bored I decided to translate that chart into maps.

https://twitter.com/undertheraedar/status/1390632762105806856?s=20

EDIT: Thanks to you all for your compliments and recommendations.

Looking over the most deprived constituencies I'm pretty shocked that the Tories managed to win a seat in Blackpool (!)

[Pericles]

Yesterday I saw the following amazing Twitter thread, and today since I was bored I decided to translate that chart into maps.

https://twitter.com/undertheraedar/status/1390632762105806856?s=20

EDIT: Thanks to you all for your compliments and recommendations.

Looking over the most deprived constituencies I'm pretty shocked that the Tories managed to win a seat in Blackpool (!)

It being 68% for Leave made it a lot easier for them.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Blackpool is British Las Vegas with a pinch of Rust Belt seasoning. It's a fairly dilapated tourism-centric resort town that has seen better days.

[vileplume]

Yesterday I saw the following amazing Twitter thread, and today since I was bored I decided to translate that chart into maps.

https://twitter.com/undertheraedar/status/1390632762105806856?s=20

EDIT: Thanks to you all for your compliments and recommendations.

Looking over the most deprived constituencies I'm pretty shocked that the Tories managed to win a seat in Blackpool (!)

They've got two as a matter of fact. Blackpool has always been a place where the Tories have overperformed the demographics (though it wasn't always as deprived as it is now). The 1997 Labour landslide was actually the first time in its history that it had Labour representation at Westminster, it was always Tory before that (aside from a brief Liberal victory in 1923). Blackpool North (& Cleverleys) flipped back in 2010, helped by favourable boundary changes, which removed the (then) very reliably Labour town of Fleetwood. They didn't regain Blackpool South until 2019 but even in elections such as 2010 and 2015 it was still only marginally Labour despite its deprivation levels and the metropolitan Cameron being an atrocious fit for the area.

[Tintrlvr]

Yesterday I saw the following amazing Twitter thread, and today since I was bored I decided to translate that chart into maps.

https://twitter.com/undertheraedar/status/1390632762105806856?s=20

EDIT: Thanks to you all for your compliments and recommendations.

Looking over the most deprived constituencies I'm pretty shocked that the Tories managed to win a seat in Blackpool (!)

Labour winning a seat as high up the rankings as Sheffield Hallam - without it being in London, and with their main rivals being the LDs and not the Tories - is perhaps the most shocking result on the chart.

Although, to be honest, a quick poke around Wokingham on Google Maps wouldn't make me guess it was the least-deprived constituency in the whole UK, or even particularly far above the top 25%, so perhaps the rankings mean less than I would have thought.

[Bakersfield Uber Alles]

Yesterday I saw the following amazing Twitter thread, and today since I was bored I decided to translate that chart into maps.

https://twitter.com/undertheraedar/status/1390632762105806856?s=20

EDIT: Thanks to you all for your compliments and recommendations.

Looking over the most deprived constituencies I'm pretty shocked that the Tories managed to win a seat in Blackpool (!)

Labour winning a seat as high up the rankings as Sheffield Hallam - without it being in London, and with their main rivals being the LDs and not the Tories - is perhaps the most shocking result on the chart.

Although, to be honest, a quick poke around Wokingham on Google Maps wouldn't make me guess it was the least-deprived constituency in the whole UK, or even particularly far above the top 25%, so perhaps the rankings mean less than I would have thought.

Notably, Labour has not broken 40% in their two recent victories in Sheffield Hallam.

[CityByTheValley]

Although, to be honest, a quick poke around Wokingham on Google Maps wouldn't make me guess it was the least-deprived constituency in the whole UK, or even particularly far above the top 25%, so perhaps the rankings mean less than I would have thought.

Can someone explain why the UK is honestly so hideous in terms of housing? The houses look shoddily built, are far too close together, and seem mostly attached to each other. I'm assuming some of this has to be due to the shockingly high number of council estates everywhere, but I've never lived in the UK. Not to mention the embarrassingly low average salaries to the point where $100k seems to be higher than even a doctor's income somehow.

Back to the point at hand, it seems that there is a pretty interesting difference in dynamic at hand here between the US and the UK. The UK has the bottom falling out for Labour akin to the Democrats hemorrhaging support across the Midwest and in White Working Class locales nationwide. Based off the table attached, however, it is clear that Tories somehow still enjoy massive support across the board in the wealthiest constituencies as well while LibDems seem to be second to them as opposed to Labour in certain areas.

It's honestly sort of funny seeing that the Democrats easily made up for their losses with the growing and prosperous suburban areas across the country while Labour could not make such gains, at least at a similar scale. Of the 10 wealthiest places in the country (according to Bloomberg, which doesn't include certain areas in the Northeast properly that also would have voted Biden), every single one except Highland Park, TX voted for Biden, and he even flipped Cherry Hills Village, CO. Something like this doesn't seem possible in the UK at all given the concentration of wealth in Southern England around London, with the wealth outside of this area being rural/exurban rather than properly urban or suburban. You have the odd spots like Cheshire south of Manchester or the Oxbridge areas maybe, but other than that I really can't think of any other wealthy suburban areas in the country, whereas every decently sized US metro has at least one suburban constituency/district.

Tories in the UK seem absolutely dominant in such areas within London somehow even after realignment, which would be like if Republicans consistently held the NJ-7s, IL-6s, and CA-45s of the country as Democrats lost the MI-5s, OH-13s, and IL-17s, but even had places like NY-10 or NY-12 that are considered safely Democrat here but boast several billionaires. It seems that the UK is just too poor compared to the US, less educated, and less diverse, to the point where this sort of suburban educated wealth based shift is not properly possible. That isn't even getting into the massive age gap in voting patterns, which doesn't affect Democrats to the extent it does Labour, who need to paint a better image as the working class party (a lost cause unless they become anti-immigration or go down other unsavory social policy paths, imo) or accelerate trends faster and capture Tory strongholds in the wealthy suburbs/exurbs. They certainly can't afford to lose the Hartlepools of the nation if they go with the former and need to win places like Kensington and even the outer areas like Esher and Walton or Epsom and Ewell for the latter strategy to capture a majority.

[Pericles]

There are still more Labour Leave seats than Tory Remain seats. In fact, a majority of Labour seats still voted to leave the EU. To be fair the Remain vote is a rough proxy for the kinds of seats that Labour would hope will trend to the left. However, even if Labour could get strong positive trends for itself, that coalition is not effectively distributed to form a government. So ideally Labour could make gains in Remain seats but get a bigger shift in Leave seats-pre Hartlepool this looked likely. That said, Labour does seem to have an emotional attachment to the Red Wall-their MPs keep saying the party exists to serve those seats. So hopefully this doesn't keep Labour from maximizing opportunities in the rest of the UK, where they do exist.

[vileplume]

Although, to be honest, a quick poke around Wokingham on Google Maps wouldn't make me guess it was the least-deprived constituency in the whole UK, or even particularly far above the top 25%, so perhaps the rankings mean less than I would have thought.

Can someone explain why the UK is honestly so hideous in terms of housing? The houses look shoddily built, are far too close together, and seem mostly attached to each other. I'm assuming some of this has to be due to the shockingly high number of council estates everywhere, but I've never lived in the UK. Not to mention the embarrassingly low average salaries to the point where $100k seems to be higher than even a doctor's income somehow.

Back to the point at hand, it seems that there is a pretty interesting difference in dynamic at hand here between the US and the UK. The UK has the bottom falling out for Labour akin to the Democrats hemorrhaging support across the Midwest and in White Working Class locales nationwide. Based off the table attached, however, it is clear that Tories somehow still enjoy massive support across the board in the wealthiest constituencies as well while LibDems seem to be second to them as opposed to Labour in certain areas.

It's honestly sort of funny seeing that the Democrats easily made up for their losses with the growing and prosperous suburban areas across the country while Labour could not make such gains, at least at a similar scale. Of the 10 wealthiest places in the country (according to Bloomberg, which doesn't include certain areas in the Northeast properly that also would have voted Biden), every single one except Highland Park, TX voted for Biden, and he even flipped Cherry Hills Village, CO. Something like this doesn't seem possible in the UK at all given the concentration of wealth in Southern England around London, with the wealth outside of this area being rural/exurban rather than properly urban or suburban. You have the odd spots like Cheshire south of Manchester or the Oxbridge areas maybe, but other than that I really can't think of any other wealthy suburban areas in the country, whereas every decently sized US metro has at least one suburban constituency/district.

Tories in the UK seem absolutely dominant in such areas within London somehow even after realignment, which would be like if Republicans consistently held the NJ-7s, IL-6s, and CA-45s of the country as Democrats lost the MI-5s, OH-13s, and IL-17s, but even had places like NY-10 or NY-12 that are considered safely Democrat here but boast several billionaires. It seems that the UK is just too poor compared to the US, less educated, and less diverse, to the point where this sort of suburban educated wealth based shift is not properly possible. That isn't even getting into the massive age gap in voting patterns, which doesn't affect Democrats to the extent it does Labour, who need to paint a better image as the working class party (a lost cause unless they become anti-immigration or go down other unsavory social policy paths, imo) or accelerate trends faster and capture Tory strongholds in the wealthy suburbs/exurbs. They certainly can't afford to lose the Hartlepools of the nation if they go with the former and need to win places like Kensington and even the outer areas like Esher and Walton or Epsom and Ewell for the latter strategy to capture a majority.

There is a lot of ex-council housing, which Thatcher's government began to sell off, and as you can imagine such properties are not going to be easy on the eye. Also in Britain it goes without saying that there is far, far less space than in the USA so property is far more expensive per unit area than in the States. There's simply not the room to build things as far apart as you see in American cities/suburbs/town, this is especially true in cities and moderately sized towns that are hemmed in by extremely restrictive Greenbelt/anti-development laws. You can find really nice housing in the UK but much of it is very expensive/period properties. The good thing is that you don't get the odious McMansions that you see all too often in the USA and the cities/town/villages tend to have more character as most American cities seem to be built on bland formulaic (albeit efficient) grid systems.

The differences between Labour and the Democrats is that Labour at its core is not a liberal party but one who's underpinning ideology is socialism/social democracy. There's a large number of Democratic politicians who are far too right wing even for the Labour right and honestly wouldn't be out of place in the Tories. The Tories for their part, despite the outrage from urban progressives, are no where near as right wing/reactionary as the GOP has become.

Also if you look at the graphic posted above, you will see that the Tories are still the party of the affluent (despite the prevailing narrative) and their inroads into Labour's old heartland seats has as much to do with shifting demographics as anything else. The old industrial Labour votes in these seats has literally died off and is being replaced by commuters for the large cities and comfortably off pensioners, hence the Tory trend which yes has been accelerated by Brexit. These constituencies tend to have relatively high rates of home ownership due in part to Thatcher's 'Right to Buy' where state owned assets were sold off at heavily discounted prices leaving traditionally working class people suddenly very asset rich, especially considering property price rises in recent years. Home ownership is one of the best predictors of how Tory a place is going to be. Labour is still the party of the working class but the nature of the working class has changed, 50 years ago it was the miner and the steel worker now it is the young professional struggling to pay the rent, the young single mother working 3 jobs and those working in minimum wage jobs in cafes/call centres/retail etc. This 'new working class' is disproportionately young (the UK is heavily divided by age) and lives in urban areas.

Labour's route back to power lies through retaking some of the more urban parts of the red wall which have more of these 'new working class' voters and making inroads into Tory seats in the south with increasingly young populations: the Bournemouth seats, Worthing etc. The road does not lie through the rich elite of Beaconsfield.

[YL]

Yesterday I saw the following amazing Twitter thread, and today since I was bored I decided to translate that chart into maps.

https://twitter.com/undertheraedar/status/1390632762105806856?s=20

EDIT: Thanks to you all for your compliments and recommendations.

Looking over the most deprived constituencies I'm pretty shocked that the Tories managed to win a seat in Blackpool (!)

Labour winning a seat as high up the rankings as Sheffield Hallam - without it being in London, and with their main rivals being the LDs and not the Tories - is perhaps the most shocking result on the chart.

Although, to be honest, a quick poke around Wokingham on Google Maps wouldn't make me guess it was the least-deprived constituency in the whole UK, or even particularly far above the top 25%, so perhaps the rankings mean less than I would have thought.

Low deprivation isn't the same thing as wealth.  Sheffield Hallam is very middle class with only a couple of enclaves of poorer areas, and bits of it are genuinely quite wealthy, but its average income won't be as high as a lot of Tory seats in the South East.  It's also a relatively professional, public sector, educated middle class, none of which helps the Tories these days, though it might help the Lib Dems.

If you look at the 2011 census returns, there are two higher middle class categories for occupation: "1. Managers, directors and senior officials" and "2. Professional occupations".  Sheffield Hallam is ranked second in the UK on the latter (after Cambridge) but only 115th on the former.

I don't really know Wokingham, but I suspect it is similarly very middle class rather than outright posh.  Quite a bit of it is suburbs of Reading, a town with an absurdly tightly drawn boundary.  It's 52nd on "managers" and 42nd on "professionals".

Top 10 on "managers":

Kensington
Cities of London and Westminster
Chelsea and Fulham
Richmond Park
Beaconsfield
Esher and Walton
Westminster North
Chesham and Amersham
Tatton
Buckingham


Top 10 on "professionals":

Cambridge
Sheffield, Hallam
Bristol West
Manchester, Withington
Edinburgh South
Wimbledon
Islington South and Finsbury
Islington North
Hampstead and Kilburn
Richmond Park

[Pericles]

Chesham and Amersham is notable since it's having a by-election soon and is one of those Tory Remain seats. The Tory majority is very strong there so it would be a huge upset if it flipped, but whether it swings to or from the Tories, and if it's the latter how much, could be interesting to see.

[ElectionObserver]

Looking at the table. Labour hold five of the least deprived 130

1st 65 Least deprived:
Sheffield Hallam
Cardiff North
2nd 65 Least deprived:
Edinburgh South
Gower
Warwick and Leamington

What links these constituencies to make them far more likely to vote Labour?

I noticed three of them are Wales/ Scotland and just two in England.
Cardiff North has voted Conservative more often than not, but Labour won it back in 2017 and held it comfortably on an increased majority in 2019 against the tide. Gower has voted Labour far more often than not. It was won by the Conservatives in 2015, but Labour took it back in 2017 and held it in 2019. Edinburgh South has been held by Labour since 1987, but was Conservative for a long time before then. Obviously things are different there due to the SNP.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Congratulations to 'CityByTheValley' for making one of the very worst posts in the entire long history of the International Elections board!

[Geoffrey Howe]

Chesham and Amersham is notable since it's having a by-election soon and is one of those Tory Remain seats. The Tory majority is very strong there so it would be a huge upset if it flipped, but whether it swings to or from the Tories, and if it's the latter how much, could be interesting to see.

Yes, it was over 50% in 1997. 

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Chesham and Amersham is notable since it's having a by-election soon and is one of those Tory Remain seats. The Tory majority is very strong there so it would be a huge upset if it flipped, but whether it swings to or from the Tories, and if it's the latter how much, could be interesting to see.

Yes, it was over 50% in 1997.  

How many seats saw the Conservatives obtain an absolute majority of votes in 1997?

[Geoffrey Howe]

Low deprivation isn't the same thing as wealth.  Sheffield Hallam is very middle class with only a couple of enclaves of poorer areas, and bits of it are genuinely quite wealthy, but its average income won't be as high as a lot of Tory seats in the South East.  It's also a relatively professional, public sector, educated middle class, none of which helps the Tories these days, though it might help the Lib Dems.

It seems generally that in measures of deprivation, the lowest areas are those which are consistently 'average' if you like, or middle-class, rather than wealthy; very wealthy areas being often quite close to poor areas.

Kensington
Cities of London and Westminster
Chelsea and Fulham
Richmond Park
Beaconsfield
Esher and Walton
Westminster North
Chesham and Amersham
Tatton
Buckingham

And if you exclude Queen's Park/Harrow Road which are lighter on 'managers,' Westminster North was almost certainly Tory in 2015. Not sure about 2017.

[Former President tack50]

Congratulations to 'CityByTheValley' for making one of the very worst posts in the entire long history of the International Elections board!

Come on, there are way, way worse troll posts and what not; the bar is nowhere near as high as you put it 

One of the worst effortposts/long posts though might be correct (or more accurately, one of the most wrong effortposts)