Constituency Sizes

In an earlier post I wrote about the Conservative government's policy of gerrymandering. Now I come across this article from last year. It gives the conclusions from two academic studies about cutting the number of MPs and changing the sizes of constituencies. The conclusions are that it is being done to make Tories feel that something is being done.

However, the conclusion of both papers seem to be that the "Labour bias" is simply because of the spread of the vote:

Labour continues to benefit from electoral size but its real advantage currently stems largely from a better distributed vote – it acquires fewer surplus and wasted votes than its rivals. It is also benefitting more than other parties from the general decline in electoral turnout, requiring fewer votes for its victories.

Only time will tell whether the 50 MP cut will have any effect on the chances of Labour forming a government. What is clear, however, is that the motive behind this cut in representation is to gerrymander.