Mapping UK constituencies by social deprivation

[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).

[Alcibiades]

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.

Just to deal with one part of this mess of a post: yes, the UK arguably has a lower quality of housing than other countries in Northwestern Europe. I’m not an expert, but it probably has something to do with how much was built in the decades immediately after WW2. However, UK housing is still probably of a higher average quality than the US’s, where many houses are shoddily built of wood and don’t even have foundations. Also, there is nothing inherently low-quality about a terraced or semi-detached house, as you absurdly seemed to suggest.

[Alcibiades]

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.

Seaside resorts in general have traditionally been Tory, going back to the Victorian era.