[2019] How safe is my seat?

Use our tool below to see how marginal your constituency is. Marginality is the number of votes that the winning candidate won by, so a margin of 1,000 votes would only need 501 people to have voted differently to change the result.

Why vote if you live in a safe seat?

Living in a safe seat constituency doesn’t mean your vote won’t make a difference. The constituency of Kensington overturned a majority of 7,000 in just two years. If everyone just ‘gives up’ change will never happen.

Supporting a candidate who might not necessarily win has a number of other implications. Firstly, Political Parties are awarded ‘Short Money‘ (funding) depending on the number of overall votes they receive, more votes equals more funding for the party to keep fighting elections with.

Candidates are also required to get a certain number of votes in their constituency to keep their deposit (the money they put down to appear on the ballot paper) if a party loses a lot of deposits it can have a big impact on their funding. Funding is important for parties as without it they can find it difficult to support candidates standing in elections. So by voting for a candidate you’re also helping them to keep fighting elections in future.

Furthermore, the electoral system will never change to benefit third parties if only voters for the main parties turn out to vote, if you want to see a change then you must show that there is demand for other parties to be represented.

Source: House of Commons Library