Sunday, May 8, 2016

UK Election results

There are still a small number of results to come in, PCCs for Wales, and the entire Bristol Council, including Mayor; however all the major and important results are in.




Northern Ireland:
In general, each party took the same number of seats they did last time, but there are a few changes.
SF lost a seat, and the SDLP lost two. In turn, the Greens gained a seat, and PBP gained 2. For those who don't know, or remember, PBP is the People Before Profit party, and is a party on the far left.

Both the Greens and PBP are "Other" parties; neither nationalist or unionist.

Nationalist parties won a total of 40 seats, on 36.0% of the vote; their lowest in modern times (since the 1996 forum)

Unionist Parties won 55 seats, the same number of seats as they've won in each of the 3 most recent elections. They've won 47.6% of the vote, compared to 46.5% last time, and 47.3% in 2007. Contrast this with 59 seats and 50.4% of the vote in 2003, and 58 seats, and 50.5% of he vote in 1998.

The big winners are the "Other" parties. They've gone from 4.9% of the vote and 6 seats in 2003, to 9 and 9.8% in 2007, to 10 and 11.7% in 2011, and finally to 13 seats and 15.0% of the vote this time.

As expected, the overall balance remains, but the big story is that "other" parties seem to be on the rise.




Wales:
I've created a map that shows the results, but first, I want to share the map as displayed by Wikipedia.

This map shows PC in Green. PC is Plaid Cymru, the Party of Wales. Sort of like a Bloc Quebecois for Wales, but this is a generalization, as the leader of PC does not even speak Welsh.

As you can see there are not only the normal riding / constituency seats, but also additional seats. This is proportional representation. I've decided to combine the two into one, and I've decided to use a shade of yellow for PC.

You can see I've cut the northern area and shrunk the map to only show the more densely populated region of wales. This allows you to easily compare the end results for each region, PR + Riding results, without having to use two maps.

While there is 1 Liberal Democrat, there are basically 4 parties who won seats. Due to the PR system, each of these parties has seats in each region.

The end result here is that a few things changed.

Labour has dropped from 30 seats to 29. They needed 31 for a majority government and so are almost certain to continue in minority.

The Tories have lost 3 seats while PC gains 1, meaning PC returns to the "official opposition" slot (though there is no "official" opposition, only various opposition parties) PC has been the second largest party for all but one term in the Welsh Assembly, and served in coalition with Labour for the term before they dropped to third, and Labour jumped to 30.

The Liberal Democrats lost all but one seat, that of their leader, who resigned as leader as a result. The party's new leader is a Member of Parliament in Westminster.

UKIP is the biggest story, they've had their biggest success, winning 7 seats, up from 0. Sadly for UKIP Wales, the party is already being rocked by a leadership challenge, so it remains to be seen how many of these seats they will hold on to in the next election.




Scotland:

Again, I'll start with the Wikipedia map:



This map uses yellow for the SNP, which again, is like the "Bloc Quebecois" of Scotland.

My map is as follows:



As you can see, I again needed to add in a region that was too far to make the cut map.

The SNP manage to win 63 seats, short of the 65 they needed for a majority, and short of the 69 they won in the last election. The SNP has previously governed in minority, and can be expected to do that again, or, to form a coalition. Given how close they are to the majority mark, they can form a majority coalition with anybody; most logically is the Greens, who have 6 seats and importantly, also support Independence. This could be crucial if the UK votes to leave the EU, as the SNP will be looking (almost certainly) for a second referendum for Scotland to leave the UK in order to remain in the EU.

Labour has dropped to third. They've had the somewhat hilarious trend in the past few years of tossing a leader because they are unpopular, and replacing them with a more unpopular leader, only to toss them and find someone more unpopular. Labour has never been in third in a Scottish election, and the last time they were third in Scotland (at westminster) was prior to the first world war.

The Liberal Democrats have dropped to only 5 seats and now sit behind the Greens. The party is not having the best of times right now.

The real winner in the election is the Conservative Party. For the first time they sit second in the Assembly, and are the "Official Opposition", with the same caveats as outlined in Wales. The win can be attributed to popular leader Ruth Davidson who is perhaps best known for being one of the few LGBT party leaders, especially rare among Conservatives. This is the first time since 1959 that the Tories have beat Labour in Scotland.



London

No maps, as they don't tell you much. but the results are clear. Sadiq Khan will be the new mayor. Khan is a member of the Labour Party and a Muslim. Backing him will be the 25 member council, 12 of those members will be fellow Labour supporters. There is 1 Liberal Democrat on the council, as well as 2 Greens, who may support Khan to get this agenda though. Joining all of them are 8 Conservatives, and 2 members of UKIP. Unlike Wales, the party has yet to tear itself apart here, but likely this is because UKIP in London already tore itself apart when it won 2 seats in 2004, whereupon both members quit UKIP to start a new party which lost all of its seats.



Councils

In the US, one third of Senators are up for election each election. Due to this, you'll sometimes end up with elections, like in 2016, where the clear majority of seats are held by one party, or the other.

Councils in the UK can be similar, and as such, looking at the total numbers is far less important than the changes.

RESPECT lost all the seats they were contesting, while the Liberals lost 1. This is not the same party as the Liberal-Democrats, but explaining who they are would be a waste of everyone's time right now due to how unimportant they are.

The Greens have managed to hold stable without any gains or losses, while local Residents parties are slightly up and Independents are slightly down.

Labour has lost 2% of their seats, while the Conservatives have lost 5%; overall, not important.

The Liberal Democrats are surprisingly up, gaining 15% more seats.

UKIP however has made the largest gains, up over 80% from the last election.

In terms of councils, Labour now controls 57, while the Tories now control 38, both down by one. The LibDems control 4, up by one, while the number of NOC councils is up by one to 24. NOC indicates no one party holds a majority of seats, and as such, there is "No Overall Control".



PCC (Police and Crime Commissioner)

For lack of a better comparison, these people are "police chiefs", though they do not actually serve as police officers, and rather, do the administrative work.

The wikipedia map is as follows:



I've had to edit one region as the wikipedia map is not fully up to date

As noted, the elections for PCCs in Wales are not yet complete. London also does not elect a PCC as policing in London is a matter for the local Assembly; as it is in Scotland, and Northern Ireland.

There are a few words of caution. First, is the very low turnout in most of these elections. Second is that these elections do not always match the way politics works in terms of party support.

However, unlike 2011, which saw far more Independent candidates elected, this election does seem to generally follow the partisan pattern, as such, Tories who had previously won in Labour areas, and vice versa, have lost attempts at re-election.



Overall

Generally, things remained stable. There were changes in the various regions, but overall, things remained where they were, with the only UK-wide trend being UKIP growing slightly. While the Liberal Democrats did see drops, these drops were compared to 2011 and not compared to elections since then. As such, things continue on mostly as they were before.

1 comment:

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