Last Thursday saw two by-elections and two new MPs elected. When the Kingswood and Wellingborough voters go to the polls for the upcoming general election, many will be voting for candidates in brand new constituencies, and won’t have the MP they’ve just elected on their ballot paper. What can the Local Intelligence Hub tell us about how these constituencies will change?

The times boundaries, they are a’changing

Both of the constituencies that went to the polls on Thursday are being divided up to form multiple new constituencies at the next general election. The total number of constituencies and MPs (650) isn’t changing, but the boundaries are moving, and there are lots of new (and long) constituency names. In the case of Kingswood, no constituency of that name will exist anymore, instead being replaced by four brand new constituencies. Wellingborough, meanwhile, will be divided into three new constituencies. Let’s dive into the detail 👇

So, who goes where?

At the top of our new constituency pages, you’ll find the candidates that have been announced for that seat, thanks to our friends at The Democracy Club. This isn’t an official data set, it’s crowdsourced by Democracy Club and their wonderful volunteers.

We can see that Kingswood’s new MP, Damian Egan, is standing as the candidate in the new Bristol North East constituency. We also know that just 36% of the constituency’s current population will have the opportunity to vote for him next time round. Here’s how Kingswood will change:

• Bristol North East will cover approximately 36% of this constituency’s population, and 15% of this constituency’s area. 
• Filton and Bradley Stoke will cover approximately 18% of this constituency’s population, and 10% of this constituency’s area.
• North East Somerset and Hanham will cover approximately 45% of this constituency’s population, and 60% of this constituency’s area.
• Thornbury and Yate will cover approximately 1% of this constituency’s population, and 14% of this constituency’s area.

What about Wellingborough? We don’t have as much candidate information, but we do know that Wellingborough will become:

• Daventry, which will cover approximately 4% of this constituency’s population, and 24% of this constituency’s area.
• South Northamptonshire, which will cover approximately 5% of this constituency’s population, and 24% of this constituency’s area.
• Wellingborough and Rushden, which will cover approximately 90% of this constituency’s population, and 51% of this constituency’s area.

What does that mean for our data?

As we explain here, it depends on how the data comes to us in the first place.

Over time, statistics agencies will release more information for future constituencies, which we will be able to import straight into the Local Intelligence Hub. But during the changeover we want to keep as much of the value of datasets for the outgoing constituencies as possible.

What can we say about how these constituencies will change?

For datasets where we have the original data at a very granular level (eg: LSOA or point-based data), we’ve started creating new datasets using future constituencies. We’ve already done that for the Index of Multiple Deprivation dataset, and we’ll let you know as we make more progress on this. 

Where we only have data at the level of current constituencies, we’ve created a process to approximately convert information from current to future constituencies. The big assumption of this method is that, for either people or area, the thing being measured is evenly distributed across that metric. As such, we think it’s fair to say that while the data is fuzzy in comparison between neighbours, overall it will capture trends across wider areas or regions.

You can also dig into the new constituencies data yourself.

Thoughts?

The Local Intelligence Hub is brand new, and we’re still working out how to make it as useful as possible – for old constituencies, and new ones. Please try the hub out for yourself, and let us know how you get on!

Photo by Red Dot on Unsplash

P.S. We’ve also published this on our LinkedIn page – why not connect with us there?