Electorate 70,177 (December 2010) | ||
 | ||
Replaced by Houghton and Washington East, Gateshead East and Washington West, Sunderland North, Sunderland South Created from Houghton and Washington East, Gateshead East and Washington West, Sunderland North, Sunderland South | ||
Washington and Sunderland West is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since its 2010 creation by Sharon Hodgson, a member of the Labour Party.
Contents
Boundaries
Washington and Sunderland West has electoral wards:
History
Parliament accepted the Boundary Commission's Fifth Periodic Review of Westminster constituencies to create this constituency for the General Election 2010.
It is composed of elements of the following predecessors: Houghton and Washington East; Gateshead East and Washington West; Sunderland North; and Sunderland South.
Following a ballot of members on 8 September 2007 Sharon Hodgson MP was selected as the Labour candidate, she represented 38% of the new seat which came from her previous seat of Gateshead East and Washington West which was abolished.
All of the predecessor seats were held with majorities exceeding 5,000 votes and 5% of the vote before the 2010 election. Electoral calculus, an academic website, gave a provisional ranking as the 28th-safest Labour seat in the United Kingdom, and the 11th-safest Labour seat in England based on the results of 2005.
Constituency profile
The town of Washington has a well-preserved historic centre with a museum dedicated to the first United States president, on its outskirts, the family home of George Washington. Notwithstanding its tourism appeal, workless claimants who were registered jobseekers were in November 2012 higher than the national average of 3.8%, at 5.7% of the population based on a statistical compilation by The Guardian, and equal to the North East average.
Election results
For 2015, the British National Party announced Pauline Renwick as a candidate, but she failed to stand.
* Served as an MP for Gateshead East and Washington West in the 2005–2010 Parliament2010 vote share changes and swing are based on notional results (a calculation of how the seat would have voted if it had existed at the previous election).