‘Up close and personal’ - Farage vs. Starmer: How Nigel beat Keir in the general election

2,300 more people voted for Nigel Farage in Clacton Essex than for Sir Keir Starmer in London Holborn

Montage © Facts4EU.Org 2024

Farage also inspired 7,400 more people to turn out and vote in his constituency, compared with Starmer

With so many extraordinary results in the 2024 general election, one result in particular has been overlooked…. until now. In their respective constituencies of Clacton (Essex) and Holborn (London), Nigel Farage beat Sir Keir Starmer in the number of votes he won and in the number of voters he inspired to turn out and cast their ballot on the day.

Yesterday as Farage triumphantly exited stage right at the end of Reform UK’s Party Conference, Sir Keir Starmer was preparing to enter his Labour Party Conference stage left. At the end of a difficult week for the Prime Minister, the news suddenly got worse – and it came from a surprising source. The latest ‘Opinium’ polling for the pro-EU and left-leaning Observer newspaper showed Sir Keir’s personal popularity rating has now plunged by 45 points since the general election.

To cap it all ahead of his opening speech in Liverpool, Facts4EU.Org can now reveal just how poorly the Labour leader did on ‘home turf’ – his constituency of Holborn & St Panras in North London.

Brexit Facts4EU.Org Summary

Head-to-head - Nigel Farage in Clacton versus Sir Keir Starmer in Holborn & St Pancras

1. Votes won

Nigel Farage MP : 21,225 votes
Sir Keir Starmer MP : 18,884 votes
The Reform Leader won 2,341 (12.4%) more votes than the Labour Leader

[Source : House of Commons Library | Chief Returning Officers. ]

2. Voters inspired to turn out to vote

Nigel Farage MP : 45,958 people turned out to cast their vote in Clacton
Sir Keir Starmer MP : 38,602 people turned out to cast their vote in Holborn & St Pancras
The turnout was 19.1% higher in Mr Farage’s constituency than in the PM’s

[Source : House of Commons Library | Chief Returning Officers. ]

Inspiring the voters?

The man who was expected to become British Prime Minister only just persuaded more than 50% of eligible voters in his constituency to turn out on election day. 38,602 went to the polling station – or voted by post – in Holborn.

By contrast ‘Mr Brexit’ inspired 45,958 to vote in Clacton. That’s 7,356 more voters than in Holborn and St Pancras, and this represents 19.1% more people exercising their democratic rights than in the PM’s constituency.

Nigel Farage addressing the Reform UK party conference 2024

Winning hearts and minds

Regardless of readers’ political allegiances, it must be said that for Mr Farage to come from nowhere to win more votes in Clacton than Mr Starmer managed to secure in his established Holborn constituency is an impressive achievement.

The PM started from a base of 36,641 votes in the 2019 general election. Since then, his constituency boundaries were redrawn in the 2023 Boundary Commission review. His voter numbers almost halved in 2024, to 18,884. Only part of this drop can be attributed to the boundary changes, however.

Each Leader’s personal majority

Naturally Sir Keir Starmer won a larger personal majority than Nigel Farage, by 11,572 to 8,405. That said, Mr Farage’s majority of 8,405 came from nothing whereas Mr Starmer has been the local Holborn MP for nearly 10 years, since 2005.

To win at all, Nigel Farage had to overturn a ‘rock-solid’ Conservative majority of 24,702 achieved at the 2019 election. He not only overturned this but also secured an impressive majority on top.

Observations

As ever, we reiterate our non-partisan stance. Our political analyses and reflections on the UK scene are driven by our core principles of independence, sovereignty, democracy and freedoms - and a full Brexit.

In today's report we felt that Nigel Farage's victory in Clacton was worthy of mention, given that there has been very little mainstream media attention paid to this. Whether this result turns out to be significant in the years to come will have to be seen. For now, though, it certainly seems as if Mr Farage is in a much happier place electorally than Mr Starmer, even if the PM is currently sitting on a large majority.

The Facts4EU.Org site and its activities such as conferences, TV & video interviews, forums, etc, are :-

Advert-free : no annoying distractions or ‘pop-ups’
Paywall-free : Reading our news and reports does not require you to sign up and pay
Merchandising-free : We don’t try to sell you t-shirts or coffee mugs advertising us
Sponsorship-free : No corporate sponsorship funds our reports – we’re independent
We’re funded by donations from you – the public

The content :-

Unique, original, well-researched reports
No ‘re-hashing’ of articles you’ll read elsewhere
Based on official data, statements and reports, analysed by us
Transparent sources : Whether it’s the EU Commission, the ONS, or the IMF, we state where we obtained our data
We’re funded by donations from you – the public

NOTICE : Facts4EU has now scaled back to publishing 5 days-a-week

For over eight years we have worked seven days-a-week. As far as we are aware we are the only organisation of our type to have done this. We are grateful to those of our readers who have made donations but sadly the level of our funding is now such that we must make it stretch for as long as we can. This means team members taking other paid work and reducing our output to five days-a-week.

Please, please help us to carry on our vital work in defence of independence, sovereignty, democracy and freedom by donating today. Thank you.

[ Sources: House of Commons Library | Chief Returning Officers ] Politicians and journalists can contact us for details, as ever.

Brexit Facts4EU.Org, Mon 23 Sept 2024

Click here to go to our news headlines

Please scroll down to COMMENT on the above article.
And don't forget actually to post your message after you have previewed it!

Something to say about this? Scroll down for reader comments

Since before the EU Referendum, Brexit Facts4EU.Org
has been the most prolific researcher and publisher of Brexit facts in the world.

Supported by MPs, MEPs, & other groups, our work has impact.

We think facts matter. Please donate today, so that we can continue to ensure a clean Brexit is finally delivered.

Any credit card user

Quick One-off

From £5 - £1,000

Monthly

From £3 per month

Paypal Users Only - Choose amount first

Quick One-off

Monthly

PLEASE NOTE IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO COMMENT : You can write your comment under any existing comments below. After you have clicked to preview your comment, you MUST then click on the CAPTCHA system and send you comment, for it to be published. Thank you!

Reader Comments 11

1. Sparky , Monday, September 23, 2024, 06:47:

YouGov provide an in depth view of how the uk voted across the country, not just two seats. Our first past the post system is unlikely to change when it is producing significant majorities such as 2019 and 2024. It is concerning that the turnout was low but not surprising following the last few years of undelivered promises and chaos. Clacton is not representative of the UK, it holds an aging, deprived and uneducated population (sorry Clacton (search Clacton demographic))
.
Reform benefited significantly from the collapse of the Cons vote. Partly (in my opinion) because a significant proportion of Cons voters couldn't vote for Rishi Sunak given his heritage. The Cons should find their way back and pull back votes from Reform if they can bring themselves back to the centre right and rebuild a position of responsibility and common sense that has been destroyed over Brexit.

2. terence patrick hewett , Monday, September 23, 2024, 07:43:

Rejoinerism's inability to understand what motivates the Brexiteers of Reform UK is one of the elements contributing to the demise of the Labour Party. The idea that the lack of support for Sunak is because of his "heritage" is laughable. Its going to come as a profound shock to Rejoinerism, when Reform UK disembowels the Labour Party.

3. Sparky , Monday, September 23, 2024, 08:22:

2 TPH. Wiki provide a summary of how people voted across the country sourced from IPSOS and YouGov. The Reform Vote was clearly dominated by people that voted Leave which is an aging population. This would suggest that the most reform can win national will be around 50% and is in decline. As for "heritage", Reform has built its support on racism which we saw with some of the candidates before the GE that were rejected from Reform. And why NF is trying to modernise Reform but I am "hoping" the Cons will sort themselves out but it will take them 2 terms following the mess of the last few years.

4. Gazzablack , Monday, September 23, 2024, 08:51:

4, sparkless
.
Sigmund Fraud strikes again.

5. NH , Monday, September 23, 2024, 10:31:

1. Sparky
Lee Anderson increased the Reform Vote by +37.8% !
Maybe you would now like to slag off the people of Ashfield and tell everybody that they are all "old, racist and stupid" ?
.
The Brexit referendum and the "Get Brexit Done" general election all produced very large turnouts and significant majorities so it obviously it was not a minority of the population that supported these policies !

6. Sparky , Monday, September 23, 2024, 12:45:

5 NH. You mean Lee Anderson, the Labour Councillor/Conservative MP/Reform MP. Had a look and yes Ashfield similar to Clacton but not as deprived, uneducated or as old. Looks like NF bagged the safer of the two seats.

7. NH , Monday, September 23, 2024, 14:58:

6. Sparky, "Lee Anderson ,Labour Councillor/Conservative MP/Reform MP"
Exactly my point !
He clashed with the Labour Council because they would not do what the electorate wanted. The Conservative Party refused to to honour their election promises which resulted in him leaving the conservative party and then he was elected as a Reform MP. The clear message is do what your electorate want and they vote for you !
.
Ashfield has been a Labour seat, a Conservative seat and now it's a Reform seat. The electorate seem to be completely open to consider different points of view. To me it's you that seems to be bigoted against Reform voters.

8. LuxuryBalloon , Monday, September 23, 2024, 16:46:

Nigel beat Starmer in the last general election? Sounds like a Pyrrhus victory to me … as Starmer is in No10 and Nigel is in Essex. But a nice (irrelevant?) fact for Reform UK voters from the non-partisan Facts4EU.

9. Gazzablack , Monday, September 23, 2024, 17:32:

9, LB
.
Pyrrhic?
In what way?
.
I see no cost to Reform, only benefits
.
They've established a beachhead in parliament and they've raised their profile enormously.
Nothing pyrrhic there.

10. Gazzablack , Monday, September 23, 2024, 17:45:

6, sparkless
.
You are aware that Lee was defending a seat that he had won from Labour in 2019 aren't you?
.
But of trivia
The last two elected MP's in Ashfield have both presented programmes on GB news
Lee Anderson and Gloria De Piero

11 comments, page 1 of 2

Add comment:

Please note: Your email address is never published unless you choose to enter it.