Calderdale Results

[miss_s_b]

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.

Comments

[jo]

I have to admit that local elections in the UK baffle me. I have no idea why you have political parties at that level - we don't have political parties at the municipal level in Canada, except for Montreal and Vancouver, but the parties there aren't "real" parties - meaning they have no relation at all to any provincial or federal parties - they exist in those cities.

If you insist on having parties at the municipal level, they should be totally separate from the national parties. It makes no sense to be campaigning on the same issues when local gov't basically doesn't really do anything but implement what is dictated to them from above, yeah? The ideal of having any of our federal party leaders stumping around campaigning for local councillors here in Canada is just bizarre. Even provincial premiers don't get involved in local politics. Federal politicians don't even get involved in provincial politics, for the most part, and the provincial and federal wings of parties are quite separate entities that campaign on totally different platforms since they do totally different things and have totally different areas of responsibility. In actual fact, there is often a lot of hostility between the federal and provincial wings of the same party.

But yeah - assuming that how people vote for a town council has any bearing on how they'd vote for a national government is just weird. As for turnout being really low - par for the course isn't it? Local election turnout here is always abysmal because people know town halls have no power - they're under provincial jurisdiction. And since there was no national election going on - where real change might be possible - is it really that surprising no one came out to vote? Changing a local council will have no impact on overall national policy, so...

[miss_s_b]

See, the idea of having separate parties for local and national seems odd to me... How do the local parties get funded?

[(Anonymous)]

Congratulations on heading in the right direction, commiserations on the size of the task still ahead,

Mark

Too many Marks, not enough Jenniebrain

[miss_s_b]

* wondering which one of many Marks you might be *

Lady Mark, Mark my cousin, Mark my boss, Mark my ex-boss, Mark Reckons, Count Packula...?

[purplecthulhu]

Well done on your own result. Hopefully your time will come eventually!

As to the low turnout, I think this is partly because nobody sees any alternatives. Labour is offering a somewhat different approach, but it's still only a slight shift from the coalition's policies. There is no radically different option being offered as, for example, in France by Francois Hollande. The closest we have to this are the fringe parties like UKIP, Respect and The Greens, all of whom seem to have done fairly well.

This really is the problem of democracy at the moment. All main parties are, to a large extent, tarred by the same brush, with only a little colouring of difference to tell between them.

I don't know how to fix this, and my lack of wish to be involved with formal parties but instead to support specific single issues campaigns (No2ID, ORG, Liberty) reflects this. I have historically been a LibDem voter, but that us getting harder and harder as Clegg fails to have any visible impact on much of what the Tories are doing.

Maybe there is an opportunity to better differentiate the LibDems if Cameron accedes to the demands of back benchers to stop giving in to the LibDems (of which I see little evidence), but then he'd be faced with the immediate electoral suicide of dissolving the coalition. But the choice might be that or the electoral suicide of waiting for the next general election, shackled to the albatross of Tory right wing loons...

So - all rather depressing.

Perhaps it's time to join the Pirate Party...

[daweaver]

For about 40% of England, these are the equivalent of provincial elections - there's nothing between the city council and the Westminster government. The old municipal councils, for a third tier of government, were abolished for most urban (and some rural) areas in the last quarter-century.

[fabulousblueporcupine.wordpress.com]

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.

[softfruit]

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).

[rhythmaning]

You may not have won, but your results sounds very good.

We only have mayoral and London Assembly elections here, and looking at the results it looks pretty depressing for Lib Dems - in my constituency, the sitting Labour candidate went from 33% to 55%, and Lib Dem vote was down by 33%.

Brian Paddick has been pushed to fourth place by the Greens. Which is a real shame, because he has some good ideas.

[fabulousblueporcupine.wordpress.com]

Yes, London is a shocker, isn't it. Why is that? I've never understood why we don't do better in London and now it's going from bad to worse. We're getting away without any scrutiny on this point because everybody is so keen to subsume it into a wider narrative of "collapse everywhere", but it's actually not true. London is truly and exceptionally bad.

[rhythmaning]

Actually, not as bad as Edinburgh Pentland!

In the London mayoral election, it really is a two horse race - a duopoly. Hard for a third party to crack.

I also think we are suffering from anti-government reaction, too. It doesn't bode well.

[(Anonymous)]

Sorry you didn't win but glad you're gaining ground.

We had very low turnout in the 2010 US elections too. I don't know about there, but here low turnout benefits conservatives, hence all the state bills put forth by conservatives making it harder for people to vote this November. 2008 was the highest turnout in ages, and I think even that was only 55%. Joseph Stieglitz came to the same conclusion you did about low turnout indicating a systemic problem.

There's a place called Stainland? That's not very nice, is it? You might as well call it Frog's Arse. At least the residents could have a little fun with that.

Cassandra

[miss_s_b]

There's a place called Twatt in Scotland.

Re: Too many Marks, not enough Jenniebrain

[(Anonymous)]

Clue: chocolate :)

(Really must sort out my non-working Dreamwidth login one day...!)