The Top 100 UKIP leaning Labour seats

By Robert Ford and Matthew Goodwin

In our recent book, Revolt on the Right, we compiled a list of the most demographically receptive seats in the country for Ukip. This allowed us to rank all seats in the country according to how favourable their populations are for Ukip, using the most recent census data.

The ideal seats for Ukip share key characteristics: they have lots of ‘left behind’ voters who we also know from our research are the most receptive to Ukip and its policies. These ideal seats also have very low numbers of voters who have, instead, tended to remain resistant to Ukip, including university graduates, ethnic minorities and people in professional and economically secure occupations.  This is a useful first exercise in filtering through all seats to find those where – if Ukip stood a strong candidate and knocked on plenty of doors – they would probably find the most voters receptive to their message.

What we are not saying is that Ukip will enjoy strong support in all of these seats. It might be that they do not target these seats, or the local Labour MP has a formidable majority, or a strong local profile, making a Ukip insurgency unlikely. In order to find seats that Ukip actually has a chance of winning, you would need to look at both demography and the local political context, such as whether the vote is split across three parties, whether Ukip is targeting the seat and has been recruiting support through local elections.

Take the seat of Knowsley as an example. This is the 5th most Ukip-friendly seat in the country. But it will be incredibly difficult for Ukip to win the seat because of the very large Labour majority of over 25,000. In fact, even whilst most of the most demographically favourable seats for Ukip have Labour incumbents they are often protected by large majorities.

The most potent Ukip challenges to Labour come in seats such as Great Grimsby, where the radical right insurgents have already put in strong local showings, and the local Labour Party has a smaller majority to fall back on.

However, even a large majority may not provide total safety from a strong local Ukip candidate. Clacton was the number one most Ukip favourable seat on our measures prior to Douglas Carswell’s defection. His strong local profile certainly contributes to his apparent ability to bring most Conservative voters with him to his new party, but so, no doubt, do their sympathies for his new party.

While Labour MPs in the safe seats near the top of this list would be unlikely to jump ship, the overnight disappearance of a 12,000 vote Conservative majority in Clacton should give them pause. Their seats have almost as many voters from UKIP sympathising groups as Douglas Carswell’s has.

Yesterday, we published the Top 100 of these seats that are currently in Conservative hands. Today, we are releasing the Top 100 seats that are currently held by Labour. You can find them below. The overall ranking of each seat in the full Revolt on the Right database is provided in the final column.

Robert Ford and Matthew Goodwin are the authors of “Revolt on the Right”