This, in the 21st century, repeatedly marginal seat contains a mix of different areas; St Peter's, Graiseley and Park are relatively deprived inner city wards, with significant ethnic minority populations, mainly of Asian origin and are Labour voting-areas. Penn and Merry Hill are more mixed and suburban with mostly Conservative voters in times of economic prosperity. Tettenhall Regis and Tettenhall Wightwick are affluent suburbs on the western fringe of the West Midlands conurbation and are the strongest Tory wards in the seat. The seat includes Molineux stadium, home to Wolverhampton Wanderers F.C..
Boundaries
Wolverhampton South West is one of three constituencies covering the city of Wolverhampton, covering the city centre as well as western and south-western parts of the city. The boundaries run south from the city centre towards Penn and north-west towards Tettenhall. 1950–1955: The County Borough of Wolverhampton wards of Blakenhall and St John's, Graiseley, Penn, St George's, St Mark's and Merridale, St Matthew's, and St Philip's. 1955–1974: As above plus Park. 1974–1983: The County Borough of Wolverhampton wards of Graiseley, Merry Hill, Park, Penn, St Peter's, Tettenhall Regis, and Tettenhall Wightwick. 1983–2010: The Metropolitan Borough wards as named above 2010–present: The City of Wolverhampton wards as named above In the Sixth Periodic Review of Westminster constituencies, Wolverhampton South West is due to be abolished. Its proposed replacement, called Wolverhampton West, would lose St. Peter's and gain Bushbury North, Oxley, and Blakenhall.
History
;Prominent frontbenchers The unit is heavily associated with the controversial Conservative politician Enoch Powell who was MP for the seat from 1950 until 1974, when he departed to the Ulster Unionist Party. It was during this time that he served in Edward Heath's shadow cabinet, from which he was dismissed in 1968 after his controversial Rivers of Blood speech in which he predicted severe civil unrest if mass immigration from the Commonwealth continued. This speech was reportedly the result of Powell's meeting with a woman in the constituency who was the last white person living in her street. He was succeeded by fellow Conservative Nicholas Budgen, who held the seat until 1997. Budgen is best known as one of the Maastricht rebels of the mid 1990s. ;Summary of results Wolverhampton South West returned Conservative until a Labour candidate gained it in their 1997 landslide. Budgen was defeated in the 1997 election by Labour's Jenny Jones, a landslide victory for the party. As the next general election loomed, she announced that she would not be seeking re-election. From the 2001 general election, the constituency was represented by Rob Marris of the Labour Party for nine years until he lost it in the 2010 general election to Paul Uppal of the Conservative Party, on the same majority of 691 votes as Powell in 1950. Marris regained the seat from Uppal at the 2015 general election. The 2015 result gave the seat the 14th-smallest majority of Labour's 232 seats by percentage of majority. In 2017, despite Marris standing down after 11 years as an MP and Uppal standing for a third time, the new Labour candidate, Eleanor Smith, more than doubled the Labour majority. In 2019, riding the surge from Boris Johnson's Conservative Party, Stuart Anderson was elected as the new Conservative MP for the constituency. ;Other parties candidates Of the four other candidates standing in 2015, the UKIP candidate kept his deposit by winning more than 5% of the vote, in the year before the 2016 EU referendum. He failed to do so in the 2017 election. ;Turnout Turnout has ranged from 87.2% in 1950 to 62.1% in 2001 and in 2005.
