Saturday, October 14, 2017

London Sucks You In & Spits You Out


This week Election Data published an interactive map to visualize the net migration data for areas of the UK to & from London. The map shows whether more people in each local authority area in England move to London or have moved from London into the area. The map also provides a rather neat visualization of why the Conservative Party could be in trouble in its traditional heartland of the south east.

Moving in to and out of London, 2013-2016 is a choropleth map of data from the Office for National Statistics. The darker colors show local authority areas where there is a net population gain from London. Where more people are moving into the area from London than are moving to the capital. The lightest colored areas show local authorities where more people are moving to London than emigrating from London.

In essence the map seems to show that the south east has had a net increase in people moving from London while some areas of the Midlands and the north have seen a net decrease, as more people have moved from these areas to the capital. It is also provides a rather neat visualization of an Election Data article published this week in the Guardian newspaper, How the Conservatives lost their home counties heartland.

In the Guardian article Election Data's Ian Warren argues that the exodus of people in their 30s and 40s from London to the south east is bad news for the Conservative Party, because young people tend to vote more for the Labour Party. According to the Economist "Conservatives overtake Labour as the party of choice from around the age of 50 in most polls". An influx of young families into the traditional Tory heartland could therefore prove disastrous for the Conservative Party.

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