Thoughts from an engineer

My home County is Durham so I take an interest in what is going on there. Obviously, we had the Reform landslide in seats won in May’s local elections. And then more recently we have had the reactions to the Durham Miners Association’s (DMA) statements on why they will not be inviting Reform councillors to address the Durham Miners Gala (DMG) from the speaker’s platform or the balcony of the County Hotel, where guests traditionally welcome the parade. Some of the reactions to the DMA statement have been truly astonishing in their level of ignorance with one point repeatedly made that the majority or a vast amount of the Durham people voted for Reform. So as a numbers person I took a look at the actual voting and what we can infer from it.

In the election of May 1^st Reform won 65 of 98 council seats under the current electoral process giving them a huge majority and 66.3% of the seats. They received 34.4% of the votes cast which of course is not the majority, in fact for every person voting for them almost 2 people voted against Reform. However, that’s not the whole story as the turnout was 34.8% which means that Reform received a smidgeon under 12% of registered voters – so definitely not the huge mandate of the people being claimed. And that’s still not the full picture. In line with the rest of the country somewhere between 15-20% of eligible voters are not registered – it’s not very simple to calculate an accurate figure as the only data I could find was by parliamentary constituency and a couple of those cross county borders. However, even at 15% non-registered voters it means that significantly more people are not registered than actually cast a vote for Reform. If we assume the lower figure of the estimate, 15%, it means that 10.2% of eligible voters cast a vote for Reform. If its closer to the higher figure then less than 10% voted Reform.

Two conclusions jump out from this analysis. Firstly, the extreme results and lack of true representation that our current FPTP system can deliver. 66% of the council seats with 90% of people not voting for that party! Secondly the importance of encouraging people to both register to vote and to actually cast a vote.

The demographics of Reform voters makes the second points even more important. 8% of 18 – 24 year-olds support Reform with 33% of over 65s. Worryingly 30% of young voters (under 30) are not registered to vote with only 3% of over 65s. Young people are also only just over half as likely to vote as the over 65s. Overall this means that an over 65 is nearly 3 times more likely to vote than a young person. This all gives Reform a massive advantage with the resulting massive over-representation in seats. It’s also likely that Reform benefitted from them riding the crest of a wave encouraging their supporters to turnout. A big campaign to get the under 30s to register and vote would be a massive advantage to progressive politics. Targeting universities and other areas where we can engage the youth in the run up to next Mays elections in Newcastle could pay big dividends.

In the wider picture it feels like Reforms support has peaked and is starting to drop - they lost the by election caused by their candidate being ineligible to be a councillor last week finishing in third place. In another upcoming by election the independent counclîllor prior to Mays election may stand and he finished behind the Reform candidates in May. Also in the Longbenton and Benton by election Refoms candidate who ran labour a very close 2nd in Mays mayoral election and hence had a high profile failed to win despite a big push from Reform #. Yes they won in Killingworth but we now have another of their MPs losing the whip and of course Rupert Lowe launching a new right wing party. It always felt that the rise of Reform was built on nothing and fueled by a sort of kinetic energy and once that drops it will fall quickly. Leaving a gap in politics for someone else!

# - I'd like to think a certain campaign peeled off protest/disenfranchised votes from Reform to contribute to their loss - although obviously a double edged outcome!