Westminster North in the Local Elections 20182 min read

3^rd May 2018 signifies an important day for some as it’s the day voters will gather at polling stations for this year’s local elections.

At the centre of it all is the governing borough known as the City of Westminster, split into two constituencies with different strongholds.

The governing MP for the Cities of London and Westminster constituency down south is Conservative candidate Mark Field.

While further upwards in the Westminster North constituency, Labour have kept a solid stronghold in the area for almost a decade with Karen Buck MP at the helm.

The local elections in boroughs such as Westminster and Kensington are probably one of the most interesting for London as despite being two of the richest boroughs in the country, a clear divide is shown between the working class areas and middle/high class.

This divide not only covers political backing, but also shows the differences in demographics, whether through age, ethnicity or literacy rate based on the electoral ward.

Karen Buck has had success in Westminster North as majority of the wards in the constituency are belong to constituencies of the working class demographic, who in default choose Labour as their priority choice.

There are 10 electoral wards in North Westminster – Abbey Road; Bayswater; Church Street; Harrow Road; Lancaster Gate; Little Venice; Maida Vale; Queen’s Park; Regent’s Park and Westbourne respectively.

Out of the 10, three wards have the majority Conservative vote – Abbey Road; Lancaster Gate and Regent’s Park – while the rest is Red heavy.

This is because those three wards are areas which are Middle to High class with a different quality of living compared to the other seven.

In the 2017 Snap Election, it had been revealed that out of an electorate total of 63,846 people, 59.9% voted for Labour while 33.3% voted Conservative.

Though there’s proof that Westminster North is a Labour controlled area, a statistic that is somewhat of a concern is the total turnout for the electorate.

Those 63,000 voters only make up 67.8% of those who are eligible to vote in the constituency, which means a large 32.2% decide not to vote during an election.

For the 2018 local elections, it looks like Karen Buck will win yet again with the amount of residents in support of the Labour Party in Westminster North.

However, wards such as Little Venice may face a battle for political supremacy as the area has a combination of Working and Middle class residents.

Photo by Arnaud Jaegers on Unsplash