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A safe seat is a seat in a legislative body (e.g., Congress, Parliament, City Council) which is regarded as fully secured, either by a certain political party, the incumbent representative personally or a combination of both. In such seats, there is very little chance of a seat changing hands because of the political leanings of the electorate in the constituency concerned and/or the popularity of the incumbent member. The opposite (i.e. more competitive) type of seat is a marginal seat.
In countries with parliamentary government, parties often try to ensure that their most talented politicians are selected to contest these seats. This is done in part to ensure that these politicians can stay in parliament, regardless of the specific election result, and that they can concentrate on ministerial roles without needing to spend too much effort on managing electorate-specific issues.
Unsurprisingly, candidate selection for a party's safe seats is usually keenly contested, although many parties restrict or forbid challenges to the nomination of sitting members. Other parties will often be compelled to nominate much less well-known individuals (such as backroom workers or youth activists in the party), who will sometimes do little more than serve as paper candidates who do little or no campaigning, or will be trying to use the contest to gain experience so that they become more likely to be selected for a more winnable seat.
Safe seats can become marginal seats (and vice versa) gradually as voter allegiances shift over time. However, this shift can happen more rapidly for a variety of reasons. The retirement or death of a popular sitting member may make a seat more competitive, as the accrued personal vote of a long-serving parliamentarian sometimes will have resisted countervailing demographic trends which come back in force upon retirement. An independent or third party candidate with an ideology close to that of the incumbent party may also be able to make a more credible challenge than more established parties. Also, traditionally safe seats can be more vulnerable in by-elections, especially for governing parties.
The fact that voters in safe seats usually have little chance to affect election outcomes - and thus, those voters' concerns can theoretically be ignored by political parties with no effect on election outcome - is often regarded as undemocratic, and is a major argument of supporters of various multi-member proportional representation election methods. These supporters also argue that safe seats receive far less political funding than marginal seats, as the parties will attempt to "buy" marginal seats with funding (a process known in America and Australia as "Pork Barrelling") while ignoring safe seats which can reliably fall to the same party every time.
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In Australia's federal system, most rural seats are safe seats for either the National Party or Liberal Party. Conversely, inner-city and poorer suburban seats are typically safe Labor, and a few of the most affluent inner-middle urban seats are held by the Liberal Party. Marginals are generally concentrated in the middle-class outer-suburban areas of Australia's larger state capitals, which therefore decide most Australian federal elections.
At the 2007 federal election, the governing Australian Labor Party's safest seat was the seat of Division of Batman in Melbourne's inner-northern suburbs, with a two-party-preferred margin of 26.0%. The safest seat for the opposition Liberal Party was the rural Victorian electorate of Murray, with a margin of 18.3%. The Liberal Party's junior coalition partner, the National Party's safest seat was the division of Mallee, also located in rural Victoria, with a margin of 21.3%.[1]
Examples include:
In New Zealand, many rural electorates, and those based in wealthy suburban areas, notably the North Shore and eastern suburbs of Auckland, are considered safe seats for the National Party. An example of a safe National seat is Taranaki-King Country, currently held by Shane Ardern, who gained 66% of votes in the 2005 election, with only 24.5% of votes going to his Labour rival.
By contrast, inner-city and poorer suburban electorates are safe Labour seats. For example, in 2005, the seat of Mangere was won by incumbent Labour MP Taito Phillip Field with 67.7% of the vote, his National rival getting only 12.5% of the vote. (Ironically, from the resignation of Field from the Labour Party early in 2007 to the general election in 2008, this safest of Labour seats was represented by an independent MP.)
Historically, some seats thought to be safe have witnessed surprise upsets. Perhaps the most dramatic recent case was the 1996 election, in which the Maori seats, safe Labour seats for the previous 60 years, were all won by the New Zealand First Party.
The adoption of proportional representation by New Zealand, beginning in 1996, has decreased the importance of winning votes in geographical electorates. It remains to be seen what long-term effect proportional representation will have on the safety of individual electorate seats.
On 6 April 2010, the Electoral Reform Society estimated that of the 650 constituencies, 382 (59%) were safe seats:[12]
| Party | Safe Seats | % safe seats | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Conservatives | 172 | 45.03% | |
| Labour | 165 | 43.19% | |
| Lib Dems | 29 | 7.59% | |
| SNP | 3 | 0.79% | |
| Plaid Cymru | 2 | 0.52% | |
| Northern Irish parties | 11 | 2.88% | |
| TOTAL | 382 | 100% | |
Examples of safe seats are in the Labour Party heartlands of North West (Liverpool, Manchester) and North East England (South and West Yorkshire, Newcastle and Durham), central Scotland (Glasgow and Edinburgh) and also the urban seats of Birmingham and the West Midlands. Those of the Conservative Party are in the shires and affluent areas of London, for example Kensington. An example of a safe Labour seat is Bootle, where in the 2010 general election Labour received 66% of the vote, giving them a 51% majority over the second-placed Liberal Democrats (at 15%). Beaconsfield is a safe Conservative seat; in 2010 the party gathered 61% of the vote there, giving it a 41.5% majority. There are few seats that are very safe for the Liberal Democrats, as even ones that are perceived to be safe can be lost unexpectedly: Orkney & Shetland is one of the most reliable Lib Dem seats, and gave the party 62% of the vote in 2010.[13]
Even the safest of seats can be - and sometimes are - upset. Whilst it is rare for the opposition to take such seats, outside candidates may be able to. Recent examples include the election of Peter Law and George Galloway to very safe Labour seats in 2005, and Martin Bell to the safe Conservative seat of Tatton in 1997. The loss of safe seats can go down in history. The loss by Michael Portillo of his safe Conservative seat in 1997 has gone down in history and created the "Portillo moment". This moment has subsequently been used to describe huge voting swings that generally usher in a new government, as occurred in 1997.
Many American commentators have decried the tendency of most House seats to become safe seats, decreasing the number of contested seats in every cycle. Specific U.S. States, congressional districts, and senate seats since the 1990s are sometimes referred to as "solid blue" (Democratic Party) or "solid red" (Republican Party) after the use of these colors in television maps on election night.
The Cook Partisan Voting Index rates congressional districts on how strongly they lean towards either major party. Currently New York's 15th (Upper Manhattan, northwestern Queens) and 16th (South Bronx) districts are the most Democratic at D+41 while, Alabama's 6th (suburbs of Birmingham) and Texas's 13th (far northern Texas including the Texas Panhandle) are the most Republican at R+29.
Other examples of a safe seat for the Democrats is New York's 11th congressional district in eastern Brooklyn, which has elected only one Republican since 1881. Major R. Owens, the previous incumbent, won reelection with over 85% of the vote in every election from 1998 to 2006, when he retired.
Republican safe seat examples include Tennessee's 1st congressional district and Tennessee's 2nd congressional district, which combined have been held by Republicans or their predecessors (except for two terms in the 1st) since 1859 (despite the switch between the Republican and Democratic parties in the U.S. south).