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All 32 London boroughs, all 36 metropolitan boroughs, 20 out of 55 unitary authorities, 76 out of 212 district councils, and 4 directly elected mayors | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Colours denote the winning party, as shown in the main table of results. |
The 2010 United Kingdom local elections were held on Thursday 6 May 2010, concurrently with the 2010 general election.[1] Direct elections were held to all 32 London boroughs, all 36 metropolitan boroughs, 76 second-tier district authorities, 20 unitary authorities and various Mayoral posts, all in England. For those authorities elected "all out" these were the first elections since 2006. The results provided some comfort to the Labour Party,[citation needed] losing the general election on the same day, as it was the first time Conservative councillor numbers declined since 1996.[citation needed]
YouTube Encyclopedic
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Why the UK Election Results are the Worst in History.
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UK Election 2010: Final Analysis
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Learn about the UK political system & elections
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 | |||
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Number | Change | Number | Change | ||
Conservative | 3,462 | 121 | 66 | 4 | |
Labour | 2,976 | 417 | 37 | 17 | |
Liberal Democrats | 1,730 | 132 | 14 | 4 | |
Residents | 63 | 0 | |||
Green | 36 | 8 | 0 | ||
BNP | 19 | 27 | 0 | ||
Liberal | 15 | 1 | 0 | ||
UKIP | 9 | 4 | 0 | ||
Others | 298 | 117 | 0 | ||
No overall control | n/a | n/a | 47 | 7 |
Source: [1]
London boroughs
All seats in the 32 London Boroughs were up for election.
Metropolitan boroughs
One third of the seats in all 36 Metropolitan Boroughs were up for election.
Unitary authorities
One third of the council seats were up for election in 20 unitary authorities.
The elections in Stoke-on-Trent had originally been cancelled following a referendum result which decided to abolish the existing Mayor and Cabinet system of governance, with replacement elections to take place in 2011 following a review of the council by the Boundary Committee for England.[2] However, it was later decided to hold elections to one-third of the council in 2010 as planned.[3]
Non-metropolitan districts
The elections that were due to be held in Exeter and Norwich were cancelled due to structural changes.[4][5] Following the 2010 general election, the structural changes were cancelled, leading to elections in both cities in September 2010 (see 2010 Exeter City Council election and 2010 Norwich City Council election).
Half of council
Seven district councils had half of their seats up for election.
Third of council
69 district councils had one third of their seats up for election.
Mayoral elections
There were four mayoral elections.
Local Authority | Previous Mayor | New Mayor | Details | ||
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Hackney | Jules Pipe (Labour) | Jules Pipe (Labour) | Details | ||
Lewisham | Sir Steve Bullock (Labour) | Sir Steve Bullock (Labour) | Details | ||
Newham | Sir Robin Wales (Labour) | Sir Robin Wales (Labour) | Details | ||
Watford | Dorothy Thornhill (Liberal Democrat) | Dorothy Thornhill (Liberal Democrat) | Details |
References
- ^ Siddique, Haroon (6 April 2010). "Gordon Brown confirms 6 May general election date". The Guardian. Guardian Media Group. Retrieved 6 April 2010.
- ^ "Strengthening local leadership and improving services in Stoke-on-Trent". Ministry of Communities and Local Government. 8 May 2009. Archived from the original on 9 June 2009. Retrieved 13 July 2009.
- ^ "Notice of Election - City of Stoke on Trent". Stoke on Trent City Council. 10 April 2010. Archived from the original on 25 April 2010. Retrieved 10 April 2010.
- ^ "The Norwich and Norfolk (Structural Changes) Order 2010 No. 997". Legislation.gov.uk. Office of Public Sector Information. 24 March 2010. Retrieved 10 April 2010.
- ^ "The Exeter and Devon (Structural Changes) Order 2010 No. 998". Office of Public Sector Information. 24 March 2010. Archived from the original on 16 August 2010. Retrieved 10 April 2010.