This, roughly, is how the House of Commons divided on the Second Reading of the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill yesterday; green is aye, red is no, grey is abstained/absent and white covers the Speaker and his Deputies, Eastleigh (currently without an MP) and the Sinn Fein MPs. I will aim to correct this map as soon as possible if you bring an errors to light; and please do so!
Some points of interest:
- South Yorkshire is the only English county where all MPs voted “Yes”; there are no counties where all voted “No” though Buckinghamshire (1 Aye, 1 absent & Speaker) comes closest.
- In a number of places; all the aye votes were non-Tory, all the others were Tory (Devon, Cornwall, Somerset immediately come to mind). In only one county that I can see - East Sussex - does the solitary non-aye vote come from a non-Tory (Norman Baker, who was absent).
- I suspect there’s work to be done on whether there’s some common factors linking the “No” voting seats together - I think there are two clusters, one traditional Tory and the other inner city areas; in essence, areas with a large small-c conservative tradition (no surprise there.)
EDIT: I have corrected the votes of the two No tellers, who were down as Yes, and two SDLP MPs who were absent for the vote. This means that, out of all the Northern Irish MPs, only 2 voted in favour of equal marriage - the Alliance’s Naomi Long (Belfast East) and the SDLP’s Mark Durkan (Foyle).
