The Labour leadership and deputy leadership candidates: where are their support bases – does geography matter?

Does geography play any part within a political party’s internal elections? As they build their Parliamentary careers, do potential party leaders develop a support base among other MPs representing the same region? Ron Johnston, David Manley, Charles Pattie, Hugh Pemberton and Mark Wickham-Jones have mapped where each of the candidates for Labour’s Leadership and Deputy Leadership in 2015 gained the necessary nominations to place them on the ballot papers and found some interesting patterns. Some of the candidates depended substantially on support from their ‘home region’, with one other the apparent beneficiary of local campaigning in another region by her team.