The UK with Dems/GOP

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

I wonder what a GOP victory map looks like.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Anyone brave enough to do the US with UK parties? Or at least the English parties since NI and the Plaid Cymru/Scottish National Party wouldn’t really work well in any serious fashion.

Al tried.

Then there's this thread.

Thanks for linking the thread.
Interesting stuff.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

In any case, at the risk of seeming dumb, I made the northeast corridor with UK-style parties. Might do the rest of the country in a bit.



This is a bit generous to the Tories--it's assuming a 2019 style right-wing overperformance. A lot of these would be more favorable to Labour normally (thinking of PA-13, NY-24, VA-08 maybe) and then a lot more would be quintessential marginals (MA-04, MA-09, NJ-12, NJ-01, all the Torie SEPA districts, maybe NH-01 and NY-10). District lines and the VRA also have a certain effect--New Jersey would probably have a few more Labour seats with compact districts, while Maryland's gerrymander of Montgomery County actually works as a Tory gerrymander, since the parts of Montgomery County near DC have a slight Labour lean while most of the outer DC area and the panhandle (save Cumberland and Garrett County) are hyper-Tory.

I should also probably say that I don't have an especially deep knowledge of U.K. politics so probably a lot of this is wrong. Also there were certain areas I was unsure about--Long Island in particular, which I ended up using Essex as a parallel for--so I'd welcome corrections. I also just realized that I completely forgot about the Lib Dems (lol) so I'd welcome suggestions about where they might win--my intuition at first blush is MA-05, NY-10, NJ-05, NJ-12, and VA-11, but that seems a little too favorable to Labour.

If anything, this is far too generous to Labour based off 2019. Those red rural districts in PA and WV are exactly the type they would have lost that year (the “white working class” constituencies Labour retained in 2019 were mostly deprived urban ones, which the US largely lacks). On the other hand though, I think you have probably been a bit too favourable to the Tories in suburban/urban districts - the Arlington/inner suburban Fairfax districts, for instance, seem somewhat analogous to areas like Wandsworth where the Tories have really slid over the last two elections. Basically, I think you have overestimated the inversion of “US-style” patterns here.

Even in 2019 Labour didn't lose the most abjectly poor parts of 'traditionally working class' Britain (although their position did weaken considerably). The places in the red wall that fell were generally the areas with high homeownership, lower poverty and an elderly age profile. I'm not an expert on West Virginia but if one of the districts is considerably less poor than the state then that one would have fallen, but in general even in 2019 the Tories still fell short in areas as deprived as West Virginia is.

On the other hand the Tories would easily be winning districts like ME-02, NH-02 (the college towns would easily get outvoted) and CT-02. These are the type of districts which would have long been Tory as they aren't poverty stricken and aren't anchored on major urban centres. They *may* have gone Labour in the Blair landslides but in general they are the type of area that Labour would have been dead and buried in since roughly the time Harold Wilson was PM.

I agree the two NOVA districts should be Labour though, the Tories do horribly with government workers even affluent ones. They probably would still hold VA-10 though.

WV-02 would easily be the likeliest of WV's CDs to vote Tory, and has the highest median household income of all three districts.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Though the poorest voters still *tend* to vote Labour in the UK, and Democrat in the US.

Income still matters, certainly much more than ever more amorphous concepts of "class".

Even now, the vast majority of the most poor constituencies in the UK have Labour MPs - despite the 2019 climate helping demolish the "red wall" and despite real Conservative gains in many of those areas over the past 10-15 years.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

(US Census Bureau)
Here's an income map on county level. Figured this might be of some relevance in this sort of scenario.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Anyone else see parallels between New London and Copeland?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

On Ohio 14, the suburbs nearest Cleveland are largely very well off but more importantly the district has a relatively large Jewish and Amish population, both of which would be very Conservative leaning. Therefore, the Labour voting industrial areas on Lake Erie would have been outvoted in 2019, though perhaps not in some previous elections.

It's hard to imagine the Amish swinging an election. I think that the general presumption among Americans would be that Amish do not vote at all (certainly this was my presumption until I looked into it); this is not necessarily true, but Amish turnout is low and Amish are not generally an electorally important demographic. A number I just found for Amish turnout in the 2004 presidential election is 13%, which apparently has not been exceeded since. I am also unsure that the Amish would be a comfortable fit with the Conservative Party.

On that note, I think a useful dimension of this exercise would be to look at how religious affiliation would affect voting patterns. I think it's fair to say that the historic Tory base would be mainline Protestants and the historic Labour base would be Catholics. Southern Baptists and non-denominational Protestants are not quite as obvious a Conservative demographic, but this exercise doesn't really work unless we conclude that nowadays they're largely a Tory demographic. Given the historic focus of the LDS church on anti-communism, Mormons are an obviously Conservative group. I'll leave the question of Jews to someone who is more able to speak on the social positions of Jews in America and in Britain.

I don't necessarily know how the social attitudes of American Jews differ from British ones, but Jews in Britain regardless of how secular they are have been Tory since at least the time of Thatcher (though they did swing back a bit over the Blair era). The Jewish areas in the corridor from Golders Green to Radlett for example, are generally very wealthy, and seem to me to be fairly socially liberal and secular. These areas tend to be the strongest most loyally Tory wards in the area (look at how the Golders Green, Garden Suburb, Finchley Church End, Mill Hill, Edgware wards in Barnet and the Elstree and 2 Aldenham wards in Hertsmere vote for example). Unless American Jews are just way more left wing than their British counterparts (this is something I don't know) then it's very likely they would have gone the same way, they 100% wouldn't have voted for Corbyn* though.

*Though tbf Corbyn would have lost all 50 states save *possibly* Maryland. 

The American Jewish vote is historically and currently small-l liberal, taken altogether, and positioned opposite to Southern Evangelicals. In America, this religious divide is very much evident. In Britain, on the other hand, class voting becomes more predominant, and the UMC Jewish vote, for obvious reasons, gravitates to the Conservatives.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Sol, I'd be interested in your take on how these constituencies would vote. Thanks for the interesting stuff in this thread, btw. It's been a pleasure.