Although it's nice to beat Labour into third place, what's surprises me is how little each party's share of the vote in the EU elections changed since 2004, as reported by the BBC:
Conservative - 28.6% (+1.2%)
UKIP - 17.4% (+0.5%)
Labour - 15.3% (-7.0%)
Lib Dems - 13.9% (-1.1%)
Green - 8.7% (2.5%)
BNP - 6.5% (+1.4%)
Plaid Cymru - 0.9% (-0.1%)
OK, Labour lost 7%, but that's only to be expected given the state of the economy, the expenses scandals, the Cabinet shenanigans and so on, so that's not surprising either.
The only things that are mildly of interest is that the Lib Dems got a slightly smaller share of the overall vote but gained an additional MEP, and that UKIP's share of the EU votes isn't much different to its share of the local council election votes - in the areas where we put up a candidate, we averaged about 16%. I would have expected far more people to vote UKIP in the EU elections than in local elections, so that's me told, I suppose.
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9 comments:
Under first-past-the-post UKIP would have no MEPs despite beating Labour. What a great system fptp is for Westminster! Fptp is electoral fraud. How can UKIP and the Tories defend fptp? How can the Tories say we have a 3 party system, they ignore the 44% of voters who didn't vote Tory, Labour or Lib Dem.
The figures look very different if you calculate them as percentages of each party's share of the vote rather than as percentage points of the votes cast. Thus, Labour lost about 30% of its share of the vote. Good, eh?
Another view is that the People's Party, aka "This Great Movement of Ours", got the vote of roughly 1-in-20 of the people on the Electoral Roll.
I'm surprised about the UKIP council elections having the same %. That is very good since it shows they aren't a one issue party or even entirely a protest party. They could be real contenders at the general election if they target seats correctly.
I don't think UKIP are generally viewed as single issue party anymore. Con/Lab/Lib keep on saying this on the basis that if you say something often enough it'll become a truism. UKIP need to wrk very hard, now, to build on there success.
Or to look at the figures another way appr 63.2% of the votes cast were for Eurosceptic or UK out parties. Good.
Come on then, how about this.
New Labour goes down in epic flames and is marginalised as it's philosophy is shown to be entirely flawed. A centerist Tory party gets into power and the opposition coalesces into two camps. To the left Labour/LibDems. To the Right UKIP / Libertarians. Overtime the UKIP/Libertarian alliance strengthens and ends up like a Whiggish free trade independent party.
Tories and Whigs again.
Just a thought.
L, that would be nice, provided there were Geo-Libertarians in the mix as well.
MW - Noted and agreed. I did take Libertarian as a catch all.
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