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All 34 non-metropolitan counties, 3 out of 46 unitary authorities, 1 sui generis authority, 4 directly elected mayors and all 26 Northern Irish districts | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Colours denote the winning party, as shown in the main table of results. |
The 2005 United Kingdom local elections were held on Thursday 5 May 2005, with various councils and local government seats being contested in England and Northern Ireland, and a local referendum taking place on the Isle of Wight on the issue of a directly elected mayor. These local elections were held in conjunction with the 2005 general election across the entire United Kingdom.
Despite losing the general election held on the same day, the Conservatives made some gains at Labour's expense, providing some comfort to the party. Conservative leader Michael Howard resigned soon afterwards and was succeeded by David Cameron, who had a decent platform to build on in his challenge to lead the Conservatives to a general election victory; the party had increased its share of council seats and importantly its share of seats in parliament.
YouTube Encyclopedic
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1/2Views:6 868 84845 644
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Why the UK Election Results are the Worst in History.
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How do elections work and why should we vote? (part 1 of 2)
Transcription
Hello Internet The UK had an election we need to talk about because after the debates finished, the people voted and the ballots tallied the results were this: But parliament ended up looking like this: Which isn't, exactly, representative. And by not exactly, I mean at all. Red earned 30% of the vote and 36% of the seats, which is sort of close, but the rest is madness: Orange earned 8% of the vote but got one eighth of that while Yellow's 5% just about doubled, and purple earned 13% and got squat. Meanwhile blue's 37% of the people booted to 51% of the seats in parliament. The blue boost is even bigger when you consider that 51% of the seats gives basically 100% the control. How'd this happen? In the UK -- national elections aren't really national, they're a bunch of local elections. The UK is divided into constituencies, each of which elects one member of parliament (M.P.) to represent them. This local / national divide is where the trouble begins. Imagine a parliament with just three constituencies, and it's easy to see how it wouldn't always align with citizens. Some people think this sort of result is fine -- “it's all *about* winning local elections,” they’ll say. “Each M.P. represents their constituency.” And while the imbalance in this example is dumb, but it's the same problem in the real election and this same argument is given, but there are two more problems with it in reality land. 1) Few citizens have any idea who their MP is, they just know what party they voted for -- what party they want to represent their views on the national level. And pretending like it's a local election is a bit disingenuous. -- in practice it's an election for now the nation will run -- not really for who is going to represent a tiny part of it. and even if it were 2) The individual constituencies are worse at representing their citizens than parliament. Indulge this spreadsheet-loving nerd for a moment, will you? The difference between what a party earned at the polls and what they got in parliament is the amount of misrepresentation error. If we calculate all the errors for all the parties and add them up we can say the Parliament as a whole has 47% percentage points of misrepresentation error. That sounds bad looks like a utopian rainbow of diversity compared to any local election because the local elections have *one* winner. Out of the 650 constituencies 647 have a higher representation error than parliament. These are the only three that don't and they're really unusual for having so many of a single kind of voter in one place. Most places look the The Wrekin which is dead in the middle a mere one-hundred and one points off. Note that the winning candidate didn't reach a majority here. Which means more than half of constituencies elected their MP with a minority of voters. The worst is Belfast South at the bottom of the list. Hilariously unrepresentative. Less than a quarter of the voters get to speak for the entire place in parliament. This is the the lowest percentage an M.P. has ever been elected by. So when people argue that the UK election is a bunch of local elections 1) people don't act like it, and 2) It's even more of an argument that the elections are broken because they're worse on this level. These local elections are unrepresentative because of the terrible 'First Past the Post' voting system -- which I have complained mightily about and won't repeat everything here -- go watch the video -- but TL;DR it only 'works' when citizens are limited to two choices. Voting for any party except the biggest makes it more likely the biggest will win by a minority -- which is exactly what happened. That citizens keep voting for smaller parties despite knowing the result is against their strategic interests demonstrates the citizenry wants diverse representation -- but that successes is the very thing that's made this the most unrepresentative parliament in the history of the UK. People happy with the results argue the system is working fine -- of course they do. Their team won. Government isn't a sport where a singular 'winner' must be determined. It's a system to make rules that everyone follows and so, we need a system where everyone can agree the process is fair even if the results don't go in their favor. If you support a system that disenfranchises people you don't like and turbo-franchises people you do -- then it doesn't look like you sport representative democracy, it looks like you support a kind of dictatorship light. Where a small group of people (including you) makes the rules for everyone. But as it is now, on election day the more people express what they want the worse the system looks which makes them disengaged at best or angry at worst and GEE I CAN'T IMAGINE WHY. This is fixable, there are many, many better ways the UK could vote -- here are two that even keep local representatives. And fixing voting really matters, because this is a kind of government illegitimacy score -- and it's been going up and may continue to do so unless this fundamentally broken voting system is changed.
Summary of results
Party | Councillors | Councils | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Number | Change | Number | Change | ||
Conservative | 1,193 | 152 | 24 | 7 | |
Labour | 612 | 114 | 6 | 1 | |
Liberal Democrats | 493 | 40 | 3 | 3 | |
DUP | 182 | 51 | 2 | 2 | |
Sinn Féin | 126 | 18 | 0 | ||
Ulster Unionist | 115 | 39 | 0 | ||
SDLP | 101 | 16 | 0 | ||
Alliance | 30 | 2 | 0 | ||
Independent | 20 | 14 | 0 | ||
Green | 8 | 6 | 0 | ||
Residents | 8 | 3 | 0 | ||
Green (NI) | 3 | 3 | 0 | ||
Liberal | 2 | 3 | 0 | ||
PUP | 2 | 2 | 0 | ||
United Unionist | 2 | 0 | |||
Health Concern | 1 | 5 | 0 | ||
Newtownabbey Ratepayers |
1 | 0 | |||
NI Women's Coalition | 0 | 1 | 0 | ||
UKIP | 0 | 1 | 0 | ||
UK Unionist | 0 | 2 | 0 | ||
Other | 96 | 26 | 0 | ||
No overall control | n/a | n/a | 4 | 9 |
Like in 2001, many results were in line with the general election on the same day.
The Liberal Democrats gained Cornwall, whilst simultaneously winning Camborne & Falmouth from Labour, and thus holding every parliamentary seat in Cornwall. Similarly in Somerset too, where they regained Taunton from the Conservatives.
The Conservative gain in Gloucestershire coincided with their gain of Forest of Dean from Labour, the swing towards them in Cheltenham where the previous Lib Dem MP had retired and their near-miss result where Labour narrowly held on to Stroud. Worcestershire's result coincided with reduced Labour majorities in Worcester and Redditch, whilst overtaking Labour for second place in Wyre Forest. The Isle of Wight was also in line with the general election, which saw a huge increase in the Conservative majority on the island.
Northamptonshire coincided with Labour's losses in Kettering, Wellingborough and Northampton South, all of which were extremely marginal seats that the Conservatives narrowly lost in 1997 and where they failed to make any progress in 2001. Shropshire similarly coincided with 3 gains in the general elections for the Conservatives, where they took The Wrekin and Shrewsbury & Atcham from Labour and took Ludlow from the Liberal Democrats. Suffolk coincided with no actual seat gains in the general election, but swings to the Conservatives of at least 3% in all seven constituencies. The swings were larger in their own five constituencies, with a swing of almost 7% in Bury St Edmunds.
The Liberal Democrat gain in Devon, however, happened despite a mixed bag of results in the general election. They lost Devon West & Torridge to the Conservatives, and in Torbay, the Conservatives reduced their majority. There were small swings to the Lib Dems in Totnes, Teignbridge and Devon North, though a big swing away from them in Tiverton and Honiton.
England
Non-metropolitan county councils
In 34 shire county county councils, all seats were up for re-election.
‡ New electoral division boundaries
Unitary authorities
Whole council
In two unitary authorities the whole council were up for election and one had a third of the council up for election.
Council | Previous control | Result | Details | ||
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Isle of Wight | No overall control | Conservative gain | Details | ||
Stockton-on-Tees ‡ | Labour | No overall control gain | Details |
‡ New ward boundaries
Third of council
Council | Previous control | Result | Details | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Bristol | No overall control | No overall control hold | Details |
Sui generis
Council | Previous control | Result | Details | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Isles of Scilly | Independent | Independent hold | Details |
Mayoral elections
Four direct mayoral elections were held.
Local Authority | Previous Mayor | Mayor-elect | Details | ||
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Doncaster | Martin Winter (Labour) | Martin Winter (Labour) | |||
Hartlepool | Stuart Drummond (Independent) | Stuart Drummond (Independent) | |||
North Tyneside | Linda Arkley (Conservative) | John Harrison (Labour) | Details | ||
Stoke-on-Trent | Mike Wolfe (Independent) | Mark Meredith (Labour) |
Northern Ireland
All seats were up for election in the 26 districts of Northern Ireland. The many parties and the use of the single transferable vote meant that most councils ended up in no overall control. The DUP gained majority control of three councils: Ards, Ballymena, and Castlereagh.
Results summary
Party | Councillors | Votes | |||
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Change | Total | % share | Total | ||
DUP | +51 | 182 | 30 | 208,278 | |
Sinn Féin | +18 | 126 | 23 | 163,205 | |
Ulster Unionist | -39 | 115 | 18 | 126,317 | |
SDLP | -16 | 101 | 17 | 121,991 | |
Alliance | +2 | 30 | 5 | 35,149 | |
Independent | -14 | 20 | 4 | 27,677 | |
Green (NI) | +3 | 3 | 1 | 5,703 | |
PUP | -2 | 2 | 1 | 4,591 | |
United Unionist | 0 | 2 | 0.3 | 2,064 | |
Newtownabbey Ratepayers | 0 | 1 | 0.3 | 1,897 | |
Socialist Environmental | 0 | 0 | 0.2 | 1,321 | |
NI Conservatives | 0 | 0 | 0.2 | 1,164 | |
Workers' Party | 0 | 0 | 0.1 | 1,052 | |
Socialist Party | 0 | 0 | 0.1 | 828 | |
NI Women's Coalition | -1 | 0 | 0.1 | 738 | |
UK Unionist | -2 | 0 | 0.1 | 734 |
Council Control
Source: ARK research and knowledge group[2]
References
- ^ BBC News Election 2005
- ^ Local Government Elections 2005, Northern Ireland, ARK research and knowledge group