Saturday 5 May 2007

Election losers and winners and spin

The results are now mostly in for the local elections. Maltheus isn't going to do a minute analysis as there's far better critiques on the BBC and Guardian websites.

The Tories seem to be the winners at the moment with gains of 800+ seats across the country and some inroads into those eleusive towns. Labour has lost about 400 odd seats and the Lib Dems have made an overall loss of a couple o hundred seats despite making some notable progress in some areas.

Locally, the Greens lost by one vote in one ward to prevent them coming the largest opposition party in Norwich. Bet Ramsays secretly fuming behind his calm exterior. The Tories have become three and Morphew managed to just abut hold his ranks with a 300+ majority and maintaining the largest grouping on the council.

In South Norfolk, the Tories managed to win big and overturn the council there. They were one of the first groups to set up a innovative e-approach to the elections with blogs, downloads and Youtube ad's. Maybe this had a influence?

In North Norfolk, the Tories gained a few off of Independents but the Lib Dems consolidated and strengthened their grip. It's going to be reallit is iy hard for any candidate up there to lodge Norman Lamb away from his seat now. This used to be a uber-vulnerabloe seat but the Lib Dems won't be easy to unlodge by any party.

Maltheus's final comment is to vent his frustration at the election spin from the parties HQ's. Yes, it is inevitable but irritating nonetheless. Tony Blair claims that the loss of so many seats is a good steeping stone to success! How?! Cameron skirts around the issues of the major Northern cities with no Tories and Ming (Probably the most honest) claims a mixed bag - yes, they did have some successes but the net number of councillors was dramatically down!

1 comment:

Nich Starling said...

Just 15 more votes and the Lib Dems would ahve gained two seats extra, so it shows how close things were to being even better in North Norfolk.

Another stat, not spin, us that the Lib Dems polled nearly 48.5% in North Norfolk (up 6.2% on four years ago) compared to the Tories rise of 3%.