At the next General Election the new constituency of Hampstead and Kilburn will be a fight between Labour and the Liberal Democrats. This places it in one of about 150 seats across the country where the Liberal Democrats can win and the Conservatives are in third place and out of the running.

It’s worth looking at what the new constituency comprises of to understand why this is the case.

The seat currently is represented by three MPs – Sarah Teather MP (Liberal Democrat, Brent East), Glenda Jackson (Labour, Hampstead and Highgate) and Dawn Butler (Labour, Brent South). There are no Conservative MPs for any part of the constituency.

The constituency is comprised 10 election wards - the 3 Brent wards of Brondesbury Park, Queen’s Park and Kilburn – Lib Dem strongholds which sent Lib Dem MP Sarah Teather to Parliament, and 7 Camden wards of West Hampstead, Fortune Green, Kilburn, Belsize, Hampstead Town, Swiss Cottage and Frognal & Fitzjohn’s (of which 5 out of 7 wards elect Liberal Democrat councillors).

The former seat of Hampstead and Highgate included the traditionally more Conservative areas of Highgate and Gospel Oak – these have now been removed from the constituency, bringing in the Liberal Democrat represented wards of Brent.

There are a range of calculations as to what would have happened in 2005 if the new seat had existed: 2 of these calculate that the Liberal Democrats would have won the seat and 2 calculate that Labour would have won the seat. Of the 4 calculations all of the say that the Conservatives would have come in third place and that it is a fight between the Liberal Democrats and Labour.

The main source for election data are Thrasher and Rallings. According to Thrasher and Rallings, the Lib Dems are only 474 votes short of beating Labour here in Hampstead and Kilburn. Thrasher and Rallings are some of the most widely respected British electoral experts, and the BBC, ITN and Sky News will use their figures to predict the result of the next election.

Three other calculations have been carried out, two of which put the Liberal Democrats in first place!

• The Electoral Reform Society says that Hampstead and Kilburn would have been won by the Liberal Democrats at the last election. 
• Martin Baxter’s Electoral Calculus predicts that the seat would have been won by the Liberal Democrats with a majority of 611 over Labour. 
• Anthony Wells’ UK Polling Report says that Labour would have held the seat by 1134 over the Liberal Democrats.

The Conservative Party have been seeking to suggest that in fact they are in a position to win the seat, however they have been using the London wide Mayoral results (of the Boris vs. Ken fight) or the European elections (where local breakdowns are not provided).

Hampstead and Kilburn Liberal Democrats have also made significant progress in recent years:

• Following the 2006 local elections, the Liberal Democrats became the largest party on Camden Council, with 13 new councillors elected, bringing the total up to 20. 
• The Lib Dems are also now the largest party on Brent Council, having gone from 10 Councillors previously to 27 currently.
• Furthermore, since then we have won every by-election in the new Hampstead and Kilburn seat. These include Fortune Green, Queen’s Park, Belsize and Hampstead Town (which the Lib Dems won over the Conservatives).

The final element is the reality of the campaigning on the ground and composition of the seat. The name Hampstead and Kilburn would suggest that the seat is the merger of two equal parts – whilst Hampstead is a household name it is relatively small population (about 12,000) and even there the Conservatives have seen their vote going backwards as the Liberal Democrats have made their advance in north west London. In Belsize and in West Hampstead the Liberal Democrats have made significant advances beating Labour and the Conservatives comprehensively.

However, Kilburn is a much bigger element in the new seat – it has a population of nearly 30,000 people and has no tradition of voting Conservative at all – in fact for decades Labour has taken the area for granted and assumed it would always vote Labour. It is the dramatic shift to the Liberal Democrats in Sarah Teather’s by-election in 2004, in the General Election of 2005 and in the London local elections of 2006 that saw Labour wiped out and the Liberal Democrats winning that has made the new seat such a prime target. In Kilburn the Conservatives have had no election success for decades (ever?) and in 2006 they came in poor third place in both the Kilburn Brent and Kilburn Camden wards.

All of this points to a close election fight with the Liberal Democrats making this a top target seat for them. Clearly they have to beat Labour and Glenda Jackson MP is the Labour candidate, but much will depend on the Conservative voters. If just 1 in 5 of them lends their vote to Ed Fordham, the Liberal Democrat, then he will be in poll position to win. His work in Hampstead (he used to live there) active campaigning on Police and crime, anti-Semitism and Jewish issues as well as recent work on the respecting war memorials in the local area put him as an attractive prospect for Conservative voters who want to ensure that Labour lose in this seat.

A close result perhaps, but definitely one to watch between Labour and the Liberal Democrats.