Swaythling Ward Results

[nmg]

Diana Jane ODGERS	Conservative Party	1215
Andrew Michael WILSON	Labour Party	504
Anne Mary Patricia WORK	Liberal Democrats	711
Christopher Francis BLUEMEL	Green Party	256
Rejected Ballot Papers		8
Electorate		9466
Turnout		28.5%

This represents a loss for the Libdems and a gain for the Tories; the returns at the last election for this ward were otherwise quite similar (Lib 975, Con 681, Lab 457, Green 260). The city council is No Overall Control.

The Tory campaign was distinguished by being largely anonymous (a series of flyers for meetings of concerned residents) and focussed on a NIMBYish opposition to a transit site for travellers on the edge of the ward. I wouldn't go quite so far to say that it was a dirty campaign, but it veered close to ad hominem in places and played heavily on unreasonable fears, rather than presenting a positive manifesto.

The Libdems produced exactly the sort of reasonable campaign I'd expect from them, but they necessarily had to rebut the Tory scaremongering.

I didn't see any material from the Labour candidate, who was previously the SU president, and ran a campaign aimed solely at students (the ward contains three halls of residence). I'm quite disappointed at the local Labour party for allowing such a minority interest candidate to stand in their name; the sole presence I saw for him was on Facebook (login required, alas). His election poster here rather beggars belief. He failed to respond to any of my questions on broader ward issues, so I'm quite glad that he wasn't elected. He doesn't seem to have substantially increased the Labour share of the vote, in any case.

Finally, I neither saw, nor expected to see any campaign flyers from the Green candidate. In this at least I was not disappointed.

Comments

[ronaldraygun.livejournal.com]

Also, that's a pretty poor turnout.

[nmg.livejournal.com]

About normal for local elections; general elections are higher, but it's still a minority of the population that votes.

Again, this is an area where I think that Australia has the right attitude. Voting should be seen as a public responsibility (in addition to a right), and I'm in favour of compulsory voting provided that the voting mechanism itself is changed to allow either STV or a 'none of the above' option.

There are those who claim that withholding your vote is a democratic right, and is an indication of one's dissatisfaction with the electoral process or candidates, but I think that they're mostly a bunch of apathetic whingers.

[rdmaughan.livejournal.com]

I have no problem with people abstaining but they should have to actively abstain rather than not bother to vote.

My brother wants compulsary voting with none of the above as one of the options. If you get less votes than none of the above you lose your deposit and cannot run for public office for the term of the post you stood for. If none of the above wins, the election gets rerun with fresh candidates.

[nmg.livejournal.com]

Seems not unreasonable.

[rdmaughan.livejournal.com]

However as only politicians get to change the electoral system it has no chance of being implemented.