Tag Archive for 'Elections'

Poulton North by-election analysis

Published on August 18, 2011 in Elections. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Although the Poulton North by-election happened several weeks ago, I think it’s worth commenting on the result and why I think such a result came about.

The by-election results:

Liberal Democrat 1,106
Labour 895
Conservative 190
UK Independence Party (James Ashington) 97

The first thing that is interesting is that Labour failed to gain this seat, something which I thought was a forgone conclusion. Either they ran a bad campaign, with their very young candidate going on holiday during the campaign not helping, or the Liberal Democrats had a great candidate and ran another trademark Lib Dem by-election campaign. I suspect both played a part.

The UKIP result was disappointing, as we did put a large amount of resources into the area, including postal vote letters, personalised leaflets and a visit from our North West MEP. We even got plenty of press coverage and had a fantastic candidate in James Ashington. What went wrong?

My theory is that given the history of the ward, where there are normally only three candidates, people are very reluctant to stray from the main three parties, to expand on this slightly, it shows that no matter how good your campaign is, unless you have a solid consistent campaign all year round, you will get very far. Voters really do need to feel that they can trust a party and a candidate with their vote, even if there is still little chance in winning.

A fair few people in UKIP still think they can turn up to an election the week before and win the seat. The Poulton North result proves that if you have that mentality, you will get very far.

Learning from our mistakes

Published on July 15, 2011 in Elections and Politics. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , .

Despite huge amounts of effort, UKIP has always struggled to get organised at a regional level. From organising large amounts of candidates, to providing support with leaflets, we have always found it hard and had to work right up to the very last second to make things work.

However, this year in the North West we are moving forward at an incredible rate, thanks to some fantastic work from the North West team and the many hard working branch and county chairmen all over the region.

At the next local elections in 2012, I expect to see a huge improvement in the number of candidates we field and a huge improvement in the quality of the leaflets we produce, not to mention the rate at which we can get the leaflets out to voters.

Looking at the North West I really do see much more of a professional operation than say three years ago. My ambition is to see the North West become UKIP’s ‘Flagship’ region in terms of how the party should operate at a regional level. Only time will tell, but the sheer amount of hard work that members are putting into the region from Cumbria right down to Crewe give it a good chance of achieving that target.

By-election in Wythenshawe?

Published on November 5, 2010 in Elections and Politics. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

I have heard that Labour Councillor Eddie McCulley has recently passed away. He represented the Baguley ward in the Wythenshawe & Sale East constituency.

This means that at some point a by-election will be held in the future. As the Chairman of the UKIP Wythenshawe & Sale East branch, I am certainly hoping to field a candidate when the by-election is called. I will be keeping in touch with Manchester City Council’s Electoral Services Unit to ensure we know what is going on.

Previous results:

Manchester MBC, Baguley Ward. 2010

Labour 2,263 (47.1%)
Lib Dem 1,178  (24.5%)
Con 777 (16.2%)
UKIP 329 (6.8%)
Green 134 (2.8%)
Soc Alt 123  (2.7%)

Baxenden leaflet

Published on October 31, 2010 in Elections. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

The leaflet for the Baxenden by-election is now complete. Now this is finished I can move on to some more projects i’m working on. However, with more by-elections on the horizon I had better make the most of my time!

Two more North West vacancies

Published on October 29, 2010 in Elections and Politics. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

There are a further two more vacancies in Councils around the North West tonight. The first one is in Blackpool UA, Stanley Ward. Whilst the second is in West Lancashire BC, Derby ward. I expect UKIP to be fielding candidates in both by-elections when they are called.

The one in Blackpool UA, is covered by the Blackpool North & Cleavelys branch and should be able to put in a decent campaign. I expect I will be desigining the election material for the by-elections which will give me another chace to perfect the ‘Informer’ leaflets that are being used at the moment.

Election leaflets and the outlook for November

Published on October 24, 2010 in Elections and Politics. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

UKIP will be standing in a few more by-elections in November and December. We should be fielding candidates in all four of the upcoming by-elections in the North West, meaning that I have quite a bit of leaflet designing to do!

As well as designing leaflets, there are a few other projects I would like to complete by the end of November, making the next four weeks quite busy for me. I will also have a Parish Council meeting to attend at the start of the month, as well as speaking at a branch in the North West this Wednesday coming up.

Everything I plan to do should give me ample things to write about on this site, so I should have regular updates.

The end of the hustings

Published on October 18, 2010 in Elections. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Last Friday (15th Oct) saw an end to the UKIP leadership hustings. I did attend the next three hustings after Peterborough, in Rotherham, Birmingham & Rainhill but all of them were a fairly similar repeat to the Peterborough hustings.

Nigel as usual, was in top form in all hustings that I attended, with David Campbell-Bannerman also put in a few solid performances. Tim was terrible as usual and Winston, well, was just Winston!

A few candidates are playing some dirty tricks in this campaign, from DCB getting Nigel pulled off Question Time, to candidates stating certain high profile members are switching sides. All this of course is to be expected, but now the hustings are over, all we need to wait for now is the final result on the 5th November.

The 5th will be an exciting time for the party, whoever wins, a fresh new team will be brought into the party, win an aim of making it even more electable. Given that when a new leader will be elected, an entire team is brought in, the party could move in several new directions. This alone could make this leadership election the most important internal election in its history.

What happened in Morecambe?

Published on October 9, 2010 in Elections. 0 Comments Tags: , .

You might be aware that I have spent some time designing leaflets and campaigning in the recent Harbour ward by-election, which took place a few days ago. The results were:

Lancaster CC, Harbour ward.

Morecambe Bay Independents 287 (47.7%, +10.6%)
Conservative 161 (26.7%, +7.5%)
UKIP (Dr Fred McGlade) 86 (14.3%, +14.3%)
Liberal Democrats 68 (11.3%, + 11.3%)


Majority 126, turnout 12%
MBI hold

As I discussed in a previous post, Labour had failed to stand a candidate due to a paperwork error, which should of meant that Labour voters would have to vote for another party. However, what seemed to of happened instead, looking at the poor 12% turnout, is that almost all Labour voters didn’t bother to vote, you would naturally expect some fall in the number of labour voters, but never almost all of them. In my opinion they should of voted despite there not being a Labour candidate, as they still have to put up with the candidate that is elected in the end. If I had to vote in an election where there was no UKIP candidate, I would at least vote for the candidate that had some of my core beliefs.

Apart from the Morecambe Bay Independents, who without interference from Labour voters would retain the seat, the other parties relied on attracting Labour voters to have even a slight chance of winning. This was also a part of our strategy in the Harbour ward which was the only viable way of toppling the MBI candidate. When Labour voters failed to turnout, it is clear the parties each retained their core vote, leaving us to squeeze what votes we could get from the others.

All things considered, we did quite well to achieve 14.3%. It is clear that people are opening up to the idea of voting for UKIP, we just need to make sure we keep their support.

Another busy week

Published on October 8, 2010 in Elections and Politics. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

I did hope to update my blog a lot sooner, so I do apologise. This week has been very busy, especially the past two days.

The next edition of the North West newsletter, which I design and edit, will be going to print sometime next week. As you can imagine, a week before it needs to be finalised, I have spent quite some time chasing articles and photos from contributors as well as ensuring all of the latest updates about what is going on in the region are also squeezed in somewhere.

Also, the Harbour by-election, (Which I will cover in detail in a post later on), has required me to spend some of my time updating the North West website with some new graphics, as well as run the North West region’s online presence on Twitter and Facebook throughout polling day.

Today I also managed to get the go ahead for a new way to communicate with the members, which should improve communication between the regional office and the grass roots members. But that is all I can reveal on here!

To top off my day, I managed to get two questions for the EU Commission drafted, which with any luck, will expose the European Union even further as the corrupt, undemocratic, wasteful bureaucracy that it is.

I already have a few things I want to write about over the next few days, so my blog should be updated every day at the very least throughout the next seven days.

Parish work

Published on October 1, 2010 in Politics. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

It is fast approaching the time for the next Parish Council meeting, which will be taking place on the 6th October.

Today I sent out the summons and notice of the meeting, which are legal requirements. I will be working on the agenda over the weekend to give the other Councillors plenty of time to read the supporting documentation, which this month includes a planning application for new Traffic Regulation Orders around Manchester Airport.

As well as doing some parish work, I was able to update the North West website and produce and send out my weekly election report to various people in the North West.

Harbour ward canvassing

Published on September 30, 2010 in Elections and Politics. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

The weather was perfect for an afternoon of canvassing. I joined five other party members on the doorstep after a quick briefing at the North West HQ.

So far, there has been very little activity from other political parties. The Morecambe Bay Independents, who hold the seat, had only put out a black and white risograph leaflet, not the quality you would expect from a political party trying to defend a seat.

The Conservatives put out a leaflet that was sketchy on details and real promises for the area, a typical standard leaflet from there HQ no doubt.

I hadn’t seen anything from the Lib Dems, but I’m sure they will do something before polling day.

Labour had put out a leaflet prior to the nomination deadline, but since they failed to get there nomination papers sorted out on time. Nothing.

We had put out a full colour A4 poster leaflet, which will be followed up with a second full colour A4 Leaflet.

The lack of activity by the others parties meant that we were the first and so far, only party canvassing. Response on the door step was quite good, you could tell it was a safe Labour ward though, but once you explained that Labour were not standing, and talked about the problems in the local area, most voters said they would consider voting for UKIP, with a fair proportion saying they will be voting UKIP.

Working my way around the ward, I saw several UKIP posters, which suggests that we will do well come polling day on the 7th October.

Depending on how well the second leaflet goes down, we could very well end up taking the seat.

Previous results in the Harbour ward:
2003 result Lab 585/558/526 MBI 445/404 Con 267 Green 94
2007 result MBI 605/463/429 Lab 531/492/472 Con 296/252/230 Green 89

North West by-elections

Published on September 12, 2010 in Elections and Politics. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Glad to hear that UKIP will be contesting three by-elections in the next month, the first one in Longdendale ward, Tameside MBC on the 30th, the second one in Harbour Ward, Lancaster CC on the 7th October, then finally the Billinge & Seneley Green by-election in St Helens on the 14th.

With the by-elections this month comes more leaflet designing and various updates to the North West website, where I have a chance at putting out UKIP activity to a much bigger audience.

It’s getting to that time when I really need to work on various things for the Parish Council, the most important thing is to get the Council’s reccomendation for a planning application off to Manchester Town Hall. After that, there are a few issues surrounding advertisements around the parish that need to be resolved.

I should be doing quite a bit of travelling towards the end of the month, so will post about what I will be up to later on.