Abstract
The House of Commons has at present 659 members, each of whom is the representative of a single-member constituency.1 The origin of the different constituencies is diverse. Some constituency names, particularly those comprising medium-sized provincial towns, go back several hundred years, though the precise boundaries of the constituencies are unlikely not to have been altered at some time. The vast majority of constituencies were in fact newly delineated prior to the 1983 general election, and three-quarters were redrawn again before 1997.
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Notes and References
Detailed and entertaining pen-portraits of every constituency, and their MPs, their histories and political and social characteristics, can be found in Robert Waller and Byron Criddle, The Almanac of British Politics, 7th edition (London: Routledge, 2002).
Simon Henig and Lewis Baston, The Political Map of Britain (London: Politico’s Publishing, 2002) has similar coverage with comprehensive historical statistics.
The history of the Boundary Commissions is told, and the effects of each of their boundary reviews analysed, in D. J. Rossiter, R. J. Johnston and C. J. Pattie, The Boundary Commissions (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999).
For a wider view of the principles involved see Iain McLean and David Butler (eds), Fixing the Boundaries (Aldershot: Dartmouth, 1996)
and Ron Johnston, Charles Pattie, Danny Dorling and David Rossiter, From Votes to Seats (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001).
House of Commons Debates (Hansard), Fifth Series, volume 535, columns 1839–41. Partially quoted by D. E. Butler in an article ‘The Redistribution of Seats’, Public Administration, Summer 1955. See also The Electoral System in Britain since 1918 (Oxford University Press, 1963) by the same author.
John Curtice and Michael Steed, ‘An Analysis of the Voting’, in David Butler and Dennis Kavanagh, The British General Election of 1983 (London: Macmillan, 1984), p. 361.
John Curtice and Michael Steed, ‘The Results Analysed’, in David Butler and Dennis Kavanagh, The British General Election of 1992 (London: Macmillan, 1992), p. 351.
John Curtice and Michael Steed, ‘The Results Analysed’, in David Butler and Dennis Kavanagh, The British General Election of 1997 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997), p. 315.
John Curtice and Michael Steed, ‘The Results Analysed’, in David Butler and Dennis Kavanagh, The British General Election of 2001 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002), pp. 331–2.
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© 2005 Dick Leonard and Roger Mortimore
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Leonard, D., Mortimore, R. (2005). Constituencies and the Electoral System. In: Elections in Britain. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230511514_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230511514_4
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