miss_s_b: Vince Cable's happy face (Politics: Vince - happy face)miss_s_b ([personal profile] miss_s_b) wrote,
@ 2012-05-04 01:09 pm UTC
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Current mood: tired
Entry tags:elections
I came third. BUT I got more votes than I got last year in H&L AND more votes than last year's candidate in Brighouse got. Mat came fourth. Overall we held up fairly well; although I am sad that Olwen and Christine and Stephen didn't win their seats, Olwen in particular got a very impressive vote share, beating the sitting Tory into third place. And we held Calder ward, and Greetland and Stainland is back with us (can't really call THAT a gain)...

So, you know, it's bad, but it's not awful.

The big story, as nationally, is low turnout. Over all of Calderdale the turnout was in the thirties, and even in the hotly contested wards it didn't get above 45%. In Calderdale. We've always been particularly politically engaged around here, and my experience in the call centre phone canvassing the last few weeks has borne that out. Calderdale people are engaged; they know the names and records of the candidates in their wards, and they actually have opinions and they care. If we can't get turnout over 50% in that sort of atmosphere, there really is something utterly wrong, and it needs addressing.

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[identity profile] fabulousblueporcupine.wordpress.com
2012-05-04 07:22 pm UTC (link)
Well-done-with-commiserations.

Becoming ever clearer how the whole party-getting-screwed thing is panning out. As always, it aten't because nobody's voting for us - BBC are mentioning an equivalent 16% vote share (which I presume excludes London mayor and assembly) which is in line with last year's elections and pretty respectable given that the polls have us on 8-10%. But the votes are migrating, as we knew they would, so we're losing seats in strongholds by the shedload and picking up votes in what are currently useless places. AV *might* have mitigated this trend, boundary changes will make it worse.

I almost think an actual wipe-out, such as Labour are pretending we're having, might be preferable - but in fact it's just another variation on dispersed support and not much to show for it, which is immensely frustrating.

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softfruit: (blonde)


[personal profile] softfruit
2012-05-04 08:09 pm UTC (link)
Also, with the stats from last May, this year Labour knew what the key wards to give that extra squeeze were, hence us not getting back in Manchester and losing the extra ward in Liverpool (two Liverpool wards were lost to the reds on very narrow margins).

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