Meon Valley (UK Parliament constituency)

Coordinates: 50°54′00″N 1°01′26″W / 50.900°N 1.024°W / 50.900; -1.024

Meon Valley
County constituency
for the House of Commons

Outline map

Boundary of Meon Valley in Hampshire for the 2010 general election.

Outline map

Location of Hampshire within England.
County Hampshire
Electorate 71,291 (December 2010)[1]
Current constituency
Created 2010
Member of parliament George Hollingbery (Conservative)
Number of members One
Created from East Hampshire, Havant, Winchester
Overlaps
European Parliament constituency South East England

Meon Valley is a constituency[n 1] in Hampshire represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since its 2010 creation by George Hollingbery, a Conservative.[n 2]

Boundaries

This seat has been formed by the Boundary Commission for England as an extra constituency in Hampshire, with electoral wards from East Hampshire, Havant and Winchester districts.

The wards included are largely from parts of the former Winchester and East Hampshire parliamentary seats with some 600 voters from the Havant constituency which is otherwise unchanged. The largest towns in the constituency are Waterlooville and Horndean.

History

When created, the seat was based on ward data, without the same candidates at all, from the previous seats' general election results, either a Conservative or Liberal Democrat seat, marginally, taking in territory from the Liberal Democrat-held Winchester and Conservative-held East Hampshire with uncertain swing between the two parties making for differing predictions (eventually this turned out to be a much greater swing nationally to the Conservatives than that other coalition partner party. Estimates were that the Conservative majority if the seat had existed in 2005 would have been around 2,000 votes. At the 2010 election however, the seat saw one of the largest Liberal Democrat to Conservative swings (9.4%), and the Conservative candidate George Hollingbery was elected with a majority of over 12,000. A similar swing was recorded in the neighbouring Winchester seat, which was a Conservative gain. It would now take a swing of almost 12% for any party to gain Meon Valley and more than 24% swing for Labour.

Following the 2015 general election it is one of the safest Conservative seats in the country.

Constituency profile

Output areas in the area in 2001 displayed higher than average incomes overall compared to the national average.[2] In the 2011 census, incidence of home ownership and incidence of semi-detached and detached properties all exceeded the national average and were some of the highest figures for the region.[3]

Members of Parliament

ElectionMember[4] Party
2010 George Hollingbery Conservative

Elections

Elections in the 2010s

General Election 2015: Meon Valley[5]
Party Candidate Votes % ±
Conservative George Hollingbery[6] 31,578 61.1 +4.9
UKIP David Alexander[7] 7,665 14.8 +11.9
Labour Gemma McKenna 5,656 10.9 +4.5
Liberal Democrat Chris Carrigan 4,987 9.6 −23.0
Green Diana Wellings[8] (aka: Diana Korchien[9]) 1,831 3.5 3.5
Majority 23,913 46.2
Turnout 51,717 71.1 +0.9
Conservative hold Swing
General Election 2010: Meon Valley[10][11]
Party Candidate Votes % ±
Conservative George Hollingbery 28,818 56.2 +10.4
Liberal Democrat Liz Leffman 16,693 32.6 −8.4
Labour Howard Linsley 3,266 6.4 −4.2
UKIP Steve Harris 1,490 2.9 +0.4
English Democrat Pat Harris 582 1.1 N/A
Animal Protection Sarah Coats 255 0.5 N/A
Independent Graeme Quar 134 0.3 N/A
Majority 12,125 23.7 +18.8
Turnout 51,238 72.7 +1.5
Conservative hold Swing +9.4

See also

Notes and references

Notes
  1. A county constituency (for the purposes of election expenses and type of returning officer)
  2. As with all constituencies, the constituency elects one Member of Parliament (MP) by the first past the post system of election at least every five years.
References
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 9/7/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.