Tooting in some respects is a fairly average constituency: it has around average unemployment and has seen an increase in owner occupiers over the past decade in line with the national average rather than the rapid increases seen in the other Wandsworth constituencies.
What is less than average and marks Tooting out from Battersea and Putney is the size of its mostly South Asian, ethnic minority population. At the time of the 1991 census 26.3% of the population was non-white.
Since the May 1998 local council election all wards but Graveney, Tooting and Furzedown have been represented by Conservatives on Wandsworth Council.
Tooting has been something of the black sheep of Wandsworth, the flagship Tory Council, beneficiary of the so-called ‘Wandsworth gap’ in council tax but a devoted returner of Labour MPs unlike the two other Wandsworth constituencies of Battersea and Putney. Both of these were taken by Labour in their landslide of 1997 but had previously been held by the Conservatives, whereas the sitting MP in Tooting, Tom Cox, has represented the seat since 1974.