26 May 2009

The Boundaries are A-Changin: North East Scotland

It's hard to say whether or not the North East's redrawing is quite slight, or massively radical: on the one hand, one the one hand, Angus is no longer paired with Perth & Kinross as it was for the purposes of drawing new boundaries, so a large chunk of North Tayside comes into the region, and the region has one more seat than it did there isn't really an exchange of constituencies in the way that most other regions face, so there's only the large tract of North Tayside coming in (and some chopping and changing around the edges alongside the boundary with Moray) and the extra seat is a result of population changes in the area rather than a significant re-drawing of the region.

Aberdeen Central stays Labour, but by a flea's bollock: the SNP require a swing of 0.07% by my reckoning. But a fair chunk of Aberdeen South brings the LibDems into play, and there's less than 500 votes between first place and third.

Aberdeen Donside is the pretty new name for Aberdeen North and it's still fairly secure for Brian Adam.

Aberdeen South & North Kincardine (the pattern for the position of compass points in this review appears to be that if it comes before an 'and', the compass point goes second, and comes first after an 'and') stays LibDem by just under 2,000 votes, much like Alex Salmond's notional majority in Aberdeenshire East. Aberdenshire West, however, is pretty solid for the LibDems.

The new seat is Angus North & Mearns, and offers the SNP a seat with a majority of around 3,800. Angus South, meanwhile, as a 7,400 majority for Andrew Welsh.

Banffshire & Buchan Coast (looks very fancy with its new 'shire' and 'Coast', no?) would see Stewart Stevenson elected on a majority of about 12,000.

In the City of Discovery, the SNP majorities aren't quite that high, but the party is notionally ahead by 4,500 votes and 2,000 votes in Dundee City East and West respectively.

On the List, it's as you were for Labour and the LibDems - just as on the constituencies. The newly-formed SNP constituency means the party has one Regional seat fewer, restoring the third Tory seat that they party lost in 2007.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Interesting how fluid it all is, with SNP, Labour, and Lib Dem majorities in all the areas. It's news to me about the new names, though - Banffshire and Buchan Coast - christ! What about Moray? Still Moray, or is it Moray and Whiskytrail Land?

Will said...

Oh, don't worry, Moray is still Moray, but Banff disappeared from the name of its respective seat in the first draft - it got a reprieve...