Posted by Dr Hannah Bunting
18 June 2024In the run up to the 2024 general election, The Elections Centre is using its unique dataset of local election results to provide insights into some key constituencies. In this edition, we consider Great Grimsby & Cleethorpes.
In the third week of the campaign, Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer faced the public in a televised leaders’ questions event. It had the most audience input of any of the debates held so far. Sky News chose the constituency of Great Grimsby & Cleethorpes as the location for this event because of its electoral context.
Fought on new boundaries, this constituency is the merging of two previous seats. It combines Great Grimsby, which had been represented by Labour continuously from 1945 to 2019 when the Conservatives gained it, with Cleethorpes, a seat created in 1997 that was first Labour until 2010 and then had a Conservative MP for the last fourteen years.
The notional results show an estimated 23.4% majority for the Conservatives in this new seat, bigger than the Great Grimsby victory though nearly half that achieved in Cleethorpes, but one that should be considered comfortable. Yet it’s another seat that’s expected to turn red on election night.
One striking aspect of the seat is the turnout rate. Great Grimsby & Cleethorpes had the thirteenth lowest parliamentary turnout across Britain in 2019 – more than 45% of the voters here didn’t participate in the election. That disillusionment was voiced at Sky’s event. A town that feels frustrated and left behind, unconvinced that politics works for them. This political discontent and disengagement is not new, nor is it unique to Grimsby and Cleethorpes, but this seat seems particularly emblematic of a political mood that is often discussed.
The same disengagement is seen in local elections – the highest turnout of all wards in this constituency was 28.93% in the 2024 local elections. The lowest was 13.72%.
Over a 20 year period, of those that do vote, The Elections Centre data shows patterns of party support in this constituency have fluctuated. Prior to entering the coalition government in 2010, the Liberal Democrats performed well in their vote share, but by the time they left office they’d lost three quarters of their base.
UKIP first stood a candidate in 2010 and won the highest vote share of all parties in 2014. In Hanretty’s estimates, Great Grimsby & Cleethorpes voted 69.8% Leave in the EU referendum, the 21st highest in Britain. UKIP haven’t fielded a local candidate here since 2021, and representatives of neither the Brexit Party nor its successor Reform UK have yet stood for councillor.
The Trade Union and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) consistently field candidates and make up a sizeable proportion of the ‘Others’ vote share. But it was two Independents that gained ward seats in the 2024 contest, both taken from the Conservatives.
For most of these two decades, Labour were the most popular party. They were surpassed by the Conservatives in 2018, but in 2022 – in the wake of the partygate scandal – Labour returned as the best placed party. The Tory vote share fell by 25% between 2021 and 2024.
In this 2024 general election, seven candidates are standing to represent the seat. Two previous Great Grimsby MPs face each other: the Conservatives’ Lia Nici who was incumbent 2019-2024 and Labour’s Melanie Onn that Nici unseated following her 2014-2019 stint. Both women are local to the area.
The Liberal Democrats, Greens, TUSC and Social Democratic Party make up another four of the candidates. A heavily Leave-supporting seat with a feeling of discontentment, this might be an area where the Reform candidate does well. If that’s the case, it’s likely to damage the Conservative vote share most, making a Labour gain easier to achieve.
The results in Great Grimsby & Cleethorpes should become known around 3.30am on Friday 5th July. One thing to take note of is the turnout figure – an increase above 54% means this election motivated more people to vote, whereas a drop might signal that there’s still work to be done to engage citizens like the ones who live here.
Do you have a question that can be answered with local elections data? Get in touch at elections@exeter.ac.uk