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| The 2007 local elections in England dealt a major blow for the Labour Party. The local elections were a decisive victory for the Conservatives in many parts of England but a disappointment for the Liberal Democrat Party that has traditionally done well in these types of elections.
The Labour Party half-expected to lose 500 council seats but viewed the loss of 800 seats as political meltdown. As it stands - a few more councils have yet to announce their results – Labour fulfilled its own prediction and in the immediate aftermath of the results, Tony Blair stated that the party had set up a decent springboard for a general election campaign.
The Conservatives were buoyed by their results with many local councils in England under Conservative leadership.
Some would argue that the real loser in these elections was the Liberal Democrat Party. Labour was expected to do badly and many parties in government have experienced a voter backlash in what could be seen as an English version of the American mid-term elections – i.e. a protest vote that rarely translates itself in a future national election. However, the Lib Dems have usually done well in local council elections and for the party to lose 246 seats must be seen as a loss on a par with Labour.
Labour – lost 505; Councils lost = 8; Councils held 34
Cons – won 911; Councils won = 39; Councils held 165
Lib Dems – lost 246; Councils lost = 4 Councils; held 23
Others – lost 162; Councils lost = 0; Councils held 5
No overall control = 85
Note:
1) Labour got 36% of the votes at the 2005 General Election. This time round the percentage support was 27%.
2) The Conservatives support in these local elections was 40%.
3) The Liberal Democrats support was 26%
Minority parties did not do as well as was predicted. There were many who believed that disillusionment with the mainstream parties would help minority parties that would give them a disproportionate effect on local councils – but this did not happen.
Various forms of electronic voting were used for these elections – with varying success. The fact that two councils have not declared four days after the voting is down to failures in the counting systems used.
Twelve councils piloted the use of various forms of electronic voting and it seemingly worked well in seven of these councils. However, Warwick, Stratford, Breckland, South Bucks and Swindon all experienced problems of some kind and had to revert to a hand count – hence the delays to any final declaration. In Swindon and South Bucks the computers used crashed. In Breckland the perforations at the top of scanned ballot papers - if they had not been fully removed – confused the scanner that rejected those ballot papers. In Stratford, the ballot-scanning machines performed less well than expected. If a cross on a ballot paper was not put exactly in a box, the paper was rejected. Warwick also experienced problems with their ballot-scanning machines.
07/05/07
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