STV for Bedfordshire
Bedfordshire is a neighbour of Northamptonshire, but in a new region for us, Eastern region.
Bedfordshire (to elect 3 MPs, covering the current constituencies of Bedford; Mid Bedfordshire; North Bedfordshire)
Luton and Dunstable (to elect 3 MPs, covering the current constituencies of Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard; Luton North; Luton South and South Bedfordshire)
The Geography
Bedfordshire is another ‘county’ that has been split into Unitary Authorities. It’s an area that has only 6 FPTP constituencies so is split 3 and 3 in my STV plan
Bedford UA to the North and Luton UA form the basis of my two constituencies. The UA for the rest of the original county is called ‘Central Bedfordshire’ gets split between them, which was kind of inevitable because it does fold around the other parts.
I chose to keep the name for the northern part simple because it does include most of the area of the former county.
The Politics
My Bedfordshire STV Constituency is largely rural with just the county town at the centre providing a significant urban element, so its not surprising that 2 Conservatives were elected here in 2024. They were with much reduced vote shares, and one of these was a ‘recovery’, having been lost in a By-Election shortly before.
Bedford had been held by Labour in 2019, and their standstill vote in 2024 was good enough to leave them with a comfortable majority in the face of the collapsing Tory shares.
Reform were at about their national average here, and with only 3 MP places up for grabs, its likely the distribution will be the same as under FPTP - 2 Conservative and 1 Labour.
My Luton and Dunstable division would most likely split the other way. Luton itself saw the drop in the Labour vote in favour of pro-Gaza candidates typical of areas with a Muslim population, but it wasn’t to the same degree as, say, Birmingham and Blackburn. I’d suggest at least some of the people who voted that way would have Labour as a second choice.
The Conservatives may have lost their one MP here, but they retained 2nd place in all three, and should get the transfers needed to elect one MP. See STV will benefit them in some places.
My predictions as always come with a health warning, with changing dynamics under STV. Perhaps then more people would have felt able to back the pro-Gaza Independent.
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If anyone would like to tell me of a famous Band or singer from the county, please so. Right now I’d been too, err, lazy to research