Election De-Brief Update for Standish

So here we are the day after the election. Whilst I guess most candidates are resting and gathering their thoughts I thought I would give you the low down and some thoughts.

The first thing to mention is that yet again Standish got the highest turnout again with a turnout of 36.2%.

With it being the European elections as well this election that confused a number of people. Obviously UKIP had a strong march on the euro mission and whilst they had a strong national campaign their local campaign was much lower. The candidate did a few leaflets but as the Tory's found out last year when someone comes from Ashton, the people of Standish don't like it and their votes suffer. This year they had someone that lived in Standish and to be fair only got an extra 112 votes than last year (2012 they got 589 - 2014 they got 701).

UKIP was always an unknown to most parties and especially this year with the European Elections being held at the same time. This year they got 590. It would seem to me that they took some of our vote but more also Labour votes too. Labour struggled this year and came in behind the Tories which no doubt the Tories are happy with but UKIP were close to knocking Labour into fourth place which would have been even worse for Labour. The Labour candidate although conducted herself during and after the election with dignity and was humble in defeat unlike the Tories have a serious case of sour grapes. Have a look here for more on that.

The Tories went much on a negative campaign against us but that clearly didn't work for them. Whilst they got 701 votes which like I said earlier is 112 more than last year I would expect that is because of the European elections. But even with that very small increase in came no where close to our vote of 1543. They probably did the negative campaign as they lost their seats years ago and that is because they did little for the community and still now they cannot put what they would do if elected so just went negative. Whilst some negative might work just doing because you have no ideas yourself is clear to voters and they will never back such a bad campaign which they did.

So on our campaign Debbie did a good clean campaign and talked about not only housing issues but other too like the state of the roads and Ashfield Village Green application. Debbie connected and resonated with residents and that showed in the vote that Debbie got which was more than double than the person in second place. Debbie got 1543 which was a landslide and that is down to the residents of Standish backing her.

So going forward if Labour continue to ignore the people of Standish they will slip further and further back. I know that next year on the same day as the local elections there will be the general elections too and Labour will be hopeful that they can get more of their vote out as generally more people vote in General elections. I doubt that even with a general election they will win the Councillor seat as people will and do have faith in the Standish Independents and especially Cllr George Fairhurst who is up for re-election net time.