Friday 11 November 2016

38* votes wins it: Eltham North by-election

Photo: Charlie Davis (right) just declared winner; Simon Peirce, on left with Eltham's Clive Efford MP
So following a hard-fought by-election in this very marginal ward, Charlie Davis has been elected the third Councillor in the Eltham North Ward to join existing Councillors Linda Bird (Labour) and Spencer Drury (Conservative). Congratulations.

The Eltham North (Greenwich) results:

Browne (Green) - 110.      3.5% (-6.0)
Davis (Con) - 1335.         42.2% (+10.6)   1st
Macaulay (LD) - 279.        8.8% (+5.5)
Peirce (Lab) - 1279 1297  40.4% (+9.3)     2nd
Ray (UKIP) - 160.               5.1% (-14.5)
Spoilt: 5

Reflecting the previous ward election results, the 1st and 2nd candidates came nail-bitingly close with only 56 38 votes separating them. Typically of by-elections, the turnout was low at 31.33% (it was 50.26% in 2014) with total votes cast 3,185 from a total electorate of 10,167.

Notably, the UKIP vote collapsed from 1,221 in 2014 to 160 this time and the Lib Dems show no sign of a come back. (see Comments below)

Cllr Davis will have his hands full with the current list of issues being raised by Eltham residents.

We can all now get back to being aghast at the American election results or starting Christmas shopping...

My posts on the lead up to this by-election here:
"Let's make Westmount Rd great again" or the Eltham North by-election

Eltham North by-election 2016: candidates declared

Who will 'Wynn' it? Eltham North by-election coming up 

*NEXT DAY UPDATE:
This post originally published at 11/11/16 12.45am had the first candidate winning by 56 votes.
I took the figures from the Royal Greenwich twitter feed (as did a number of media outlets I see). But different and, as it turned out, correct figures were posted later on the Council website – the Labour candidate had in fact won 1,297 votes therefore the difference between 1st and 2nd candidates was even closer at 38. So there you have it. Thanks to 'Anonymous' in the comments.

Here’s the confirmation from Twitter:


and the website:

3 comments:

Raven said...

Sam Macaulay, the Lib Dem candidate has commented via Twitter (@SamMacaulay3):

"..absolutely showed signs of comeback from 6th to 3rd in highly marginal seat without machine Con/Lab had 😃"

Thanks, worth pointing out.

True statistically, 3rd this time out of 5 parties/candidates (in 2014, 6th out of 6 parties fielding 10 candidates). Always a subjective element in interpreting the figures. 279 seemed low compared to others above and the total turnout number.

Anonymous said...

The Council website gives Labout 1297 votes which is what the Returning Officer read out (see Periscope). Possibly the Council tweet of 1279 is wrong?

Apart from this Greenwich Council did a good job of keeping people at home informed of what was going on at the count.

The rseult is not that different from the 2005 by election in the ward when Nigel Fletcher was narrowly first elected. However the Conservatives then had a much larger majority at the 2006 Council elections

Raven said...

Many thanks Anonymous.
That's very true - I did tweet 1,297 during the Periscope broadcast but then deleted it when I saw the Royal Greenwich tweet, not wanting to have wrong info out there!

I have asked RG which is correct! Let's see. (Macaulay's 279 may have caused some dyslexic confusion!)