Safe Seat - United Kingdom

United Kingdom

On 6 April 2010, the Electoral Reform Society estimated that of the 650 constituencies, 382 (59%) were safe seats:

Examples of safe seats are in the Labour Party heartlands of North West (Liverpool, Manchester) and North East England (South and West Yorkshire, Newcastle and Durham), central Scotland (Glasgow and Edinburgh) and also the urban seats of Birmingham and the West Midlands. Those of the Conservative Party are in the shires and affluent areas of London, for example Kensington. An example of a safe Labour seat is Bootle, where in the 2010 general election Labour received 66% of the vote, giving them a 51% majority over the second-placed Liberal Democrats (at 15%). Beaconsfield is a safe Conservative seat; in 2010 the party gathered 61% of the vote there, giving it a 41.5% majority. There are few seats that are very safe for the Liberal Democrats, as even ones that are perceived to be safe can be lost unexpectedly: Orkney & Shetland is one of the most reliable Lib Dem seats, and gave the party 62% of the vote in 2010.

The Electoral Reform Society identifies what it calls "super safe seats", which have been held continuously by one party since the 19th century. In so doing, it equates seats with their rough equivalents under previous boundaries. For example, following the 2010 general election, it identifies the seat of Haltemprice and Howden as having been held by the Conservative Party since the 1837 general election, although the seat's current boundaries were only set in 1997. Similarly, it considers that Wokingham (and a few others) have been held by the Conservative Party since 1885, Devon East, Fylde and Arundel and South Downs since 1868, Hampshire North East since 1857, Rutland and Melton, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton and East Worthing and Shoreham since 1841, and Shropshire North since 1835, making it historically the safest seat of all, having been held without interruption by the Conservatives since the time of the Tamworth Manifesto, and since before Queen Victoria's accession to the throne. (For historical reasons, the Conservative Party being older that the other current main parties, it holds all the "oldest" safe seats.)

Even the safest of seats can be - and sometimes are - upset. Whilst it is rare for the opposition to take such seats, outside candidates may be able to. Recent examples include the election of Peter Law and George Galloway to very safe Labour seats in 2005, and Martin Bell to the safe Conservative seat of Tatton in 1997. The loss of safe seats can go down in history. The loss by Michael Portillo of his safe Conservative seat in 1997 has gone down in history and created the "Portillo moment". This moment has subsequently been used to describe huge voting swings that generally usher in a new government, as occurred in 1997.