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May 02, 2008
Eastleigh
Thanks to my old school buddy and Telegraph journalist Jonathan Isaby for picking up on one particularly odd result that FPTP has thrown up in the local elections. Eastleigh. Jonathan notes:
"Within the boundaries of Chris Huhne's Eastleigh constituency there is no longer a single Tory councillor: the last one was dispensed with last night, and there are now 33 Lib Dems and just 2 Labour borough councillors holding office within Huhne's seat. This must surely make the Eastleigh parliamentary seat unique among what are, on paper, the top Tory target seats at the next election in that there is not a single Conservative councillor there. Huhne's majority over the Conservatives was barely 500 in 2005, when he was a newly-installed candidate; but the results from his end of Hampshire last night make it hard to believe that the seat is really twelfth on the Tories' national target list."
The answer lies in looking back at the results from the last few elections. This from ERS's 2007 Local Election report on the Eastleigh results in 2007:
"the LibDems gained 93% of the seats with 51% of the vote. While the Conservatives won no seats with 29% of the vote. Labour with 12% also gained no seats."
And the same pattern in 2006, from ERS's 2006 report:
"the LibDems won 49% of the vote and 13 out of 16 of the available seats."
Although we haven't done the number-crunching yet, I suspect we'll see a similar thing this time - with a fairly high Tory vote not being rewarded with seats. So the underlying Tory vote is still strong, even if not reflected at the elections.
Interestingly, Conor Burns, the Conservative candidate in Eastleigh in 2001 and 2005, supports electoral reform.
Posted by malcolmclark on May 02, 2008
