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April 2, 2010 10:52 pm

Tory targets: An economic snapshot

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To return to Number 10 and gain control of Parliament, the Conservatives must win a selection of marginal Labour and Liberal Democrat-held constituencies in the general election.

Below is an in-depth economic portrait of 20 battleground areas chosen by the Financial Times, plus an analysis of how each constituency has fared since the 2005 election.

The map will be updated with multimedia dispatches from around the country during the course of the campaign. See below for more about this graphic.

Sources: Income data: HMRC | Job seekers allowance: Department for Work & Pensions/Nomis | National Insurance registrations: Department for Work & Pensions | Occupational sectors data: Annual Population Survey (ONS/Nomis April 2008 to March 2009 rolling sample)

The graphic examines five socio-economic indicators:

  • National Insurance registrations by overseas workers as a percentage of total people of working age. The data examine the number of non-British workers that register for National Insurance numbers – and are consequently employed legally in the UK. This is one way of assessing the immigrant working population.
  • The constituency’s mean income
  • The constituency’s median income
  • The number of jobseekers as a percentage of people of working age. This shows the number of people who have received job seekers allowance, so is a gauge of unemployment in the constituency
  • The types of jobs constituency residents hold. This is a socio-economic view of the working population

Since the 2005 election, considerable changes have been made to the boundaries of many constituencies, resulting in changes to their demographic make up and in some cases making comparisons to the previous election difficult. All the data in the graphic below is based on 2005 boundaries, since there is no data available yet for the 2009 constituencies. The scale on the left hand side of each constituency page (under the map) indicates how much the boundaries have changed. None of the constituencies in the FT sample have changed by more than 20 per cent.

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