Thursday June 4 saw voting in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. I haven’t seen any results from the UK for either local council elections in England or the European Parliament (which I believe will be counted on Sunday), however, we have got results for the Netherlands.
Based on exit polls, the result seems to be:
- Christian Democratic Appeal (EPP) – 19.6%, 5 seats (-2)
- Party of Freedom (Far-right) – 15.3%, 4 seats (+4)
- Labour (PES) – 13.9%, 4 seats (-3)
- People”s Party for Freedom and Democracy (ELDR) – 11.0%, 3 seats (-1)
- Democrats (ELDR) – 10.2%, 3 seats (+2)
- GroenLinks (GRN) – 8.8%, 2 seats (-)
- Socialists (EUL) – 7.9%, 2 seats (-)
- Christian Union (I/DEM) – 7.4%, 2 seats (-)
Meanwhile in the UK, the British Labour government doesn’t seem to be waiting for the expected disastrous election results for the party to start imploding with up-and-coming Cabinet minister James Purnell resigning from the cabinet and calling on Gordon Brown to quit:
We therefore owe it to our country to give it a real choice. We need to show that we are prepared to fight to be a credible government and have the courage to offer an alternative future.
I am therefore calling on you to stand aside to give our party a fighting chance of winning. As such I am resigning from government.
The party was here long before us, and we want it to be here long after we have gone. We must do the right thing by it.
I am not seeking the leadership, nor acting with anyone else. My actions are my own considered view, nothing more.
If the consensus is that you should continue, then I will support the government loyally from the backbenches. But I do believe that this question now needs to be put.
12:19pm – Update from both Netherlands and the UK. Justin-Paul has pointed out that the Dutch results might not go as the exit polls predict:
Okay, stop press. I’m taking a closer look at the Dutch results; it looks like the Greens have a chance of winning a third seat at the expense of Labour. Some of these results are unprecedented: both the Democrats and Greens outpolled Labour in Amsterdam, which is one of its key strongholds. The Democrats registered a massive 14% swing to go to 21%; the Greens got a more modest one of 2% to poll 20%. Labour just under 15%.
The Party for Freedom has polled some particularly disturbing results, coming first in a few other key Labour strongholds like Rotterdam.
In the UK, the first council to report is Bristol, where the result is:
Lib Dems = 36 (+4)
Conservatives = 17 (+4)
Labour = 16 (-8)
Greens = 1 (-)
For purpose of comparison, Bristol council covers four Westminster electorates, three held by Labour and one by the Liberal Democrats.
Regarding the UK -
Labour looks like it’s suffering big losses in Bristol and Lincolnshire. Tories claiming Bristol will be a Labour free zone.
I’ll won’t copy and paste my comment in the “Profile Summary” thread, but there’s still talk of the Greens taking a seat off Labour. Other possibilities are the Party for Freedom winning a 5th seat or the Party for the Animals winning one.
With half the councils yet to report results, things could still go in a few directions on the last seat or two.
Here’s a good site to watch (results are still coming in):
http://europakiest.nos.nl/live
Scroll down for the current projections. “Per gemeente” means “By council” if you want to look at specific cities, otherwise just stay at the “Aantal zetels” (Number of Seats) tab.
Some abbreviations might help here:
CDA = Christian Democrats
Pvda = Labour
VVD = Liberals (People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy)
GRLINKS: Greens
SP: Socialists
CU-SGP: Christian Union / Reformed Calvinists
D66: Democrats
PVV: Party for Freedom
Clicking on “meer partijuitslagen” (more party results) will show you the other parties, but they won’t be getting seats.
BRISTOL is the first UK council to declare its results:
Lib Dems = 36 (+4)
Conservatives = 17 (+4)
Labour = 16 (-8)
Greens = 1 (-)
The Lib Dems now have a 36-34 majority on council.
Oz, where are you getting local election results?
I was going off the Daily Telegraph results live blog but that seems to have disappeared.
Actually, there’s some info here:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/local-elections/5447195/Local-elections-2009-results-live-blog.html
Lincolnshire results here:
http://www.lincolnshire.gov.uk/elecResultshome.asp?catid=2221
10% swing against Labour giving them 11% of the vote and a lost of 16 seats.
To give you an idea of how badly Dutch Labour has done, I’ve checked the results for all the cities with 100,000+ residents (there were 21 late last year), which constitute many of its traditional strongholds. 19 have reported results so far, and Labour is no longer the largest party in 17 of them.
1. AMSTERDAM: 14.7% (-13.6) Third place behind Democrats (21.2%) and Greens (20.0%). Party for Freedom in fourth at 12.7%
2. ROTTERDAM: 15.0% (-16.0) A distant second to the Party for Freedom (22.5%) with the Democrats in third with 13.2%
3. ‘S-GRAVENHAGE aka DEN HAAG aka THE HAGUE: 12.3% (-12.6) Into fourth place behind Party for Freedom (19.9%), Democrats (16.9%) and the Liberals (13.2%)
4. UTRECHT: 13.1% (-10.8) Third place behind the Democrats (22.4%) and Greens (20.9%)
5. EINDHOVEN: 12.5% (-12.2) Fourth place behind the Party for Freedom (15.6%), Christian Democrats (16.0%) and Democrats (14.4%)
6. ALMERE: 12.7% (-17.2) Distant second to Party for Freedom (27.0%), with the Democrats and Liberals only a few tenths of a percentage point behind.
7. TILBURG: 12.1% (-11.5) Fourth behind the Christian Democrats (17.9%), Party for Freedom (17.1%), Democrats (12.9%)
8. GRONINGEN: 17.5% (-13.5) Just edged out the Greens (17.4%) and Democrats (17.3%) for first place. Groningen is traditionally the most left-wing city in the country, with a particular loyalty to Labour.
9. NIJMEGEN: 13.6% (-12.9) Third place behind the Greens (20.9%) and Democrats (17.4%). Christian Democrats close behind at 13.2%.
10. HAARLEM: 14.2% (-13.2) Third place behind the Democrats (17.4%) and Greens (15.2%) with the Party for Freedom in fourth at 14.1%
11. ARNHEM: 13.9% (-13.7) Fourth place behind the Democrats (16.1%), Greens (15.4%) and Party for Freedom (14.0%).
12. BREDA: 11.4% (-9.2) Fourth place behind the Christian Democrats (18.6%), Party for Freedom (16.1%) and Democrats (15.4%).
13. APELDOORN: 12.5% (-13.3) Third place behind the Christian Democrats (18.1%) and Party for Freedom (15.0%).
14. ENSCHEDE: 16.0% (-16.7) The only city Labour held with a half-decent margin, though the Christian Democrats are at 15.3% and the Party for Freedom at 14.9%
15. AMERSFOORT: 12.4% (-10.1) Another humiliation to add to the collection: fifth behind the Democrats (15.2%), Christian Democrats (14.2%), Party for Freedom (13.3%) and Greens (12.6%).
16. DORDRECHT: 13.0% (-12.8) Third behind the Party for Freedom (19.0%) and the Christian Democrats (13.6%).
17. ZOETERMEER: 11.9% (-13.2) Equal fourth with the Liberals, behind the Party for Freedom (22.4%), CDA (13.7%) and Democrats (13.1%).
18. LEIDEN: 13.7% (-12.4) Third behind the Democrats (22.4%) and Greens (16.8%). Party for Freedom is fourth with 11.6%
19. ZWOLLE: 13.9% (-12.7) Second to the Christian Democrats (16.8%), with the Christian Union / Reformed Calvinists in third place with 13.5%.
Excuse the spamming, but the latest news from the Netherlands is that with 92% of votes counted (26 of the 450+ councils finishing their count this morning), the Greens are on track to take the last seat and increase their representation to 3.
As a GroenLinks member, I couldn’t be more thrilled; this will be the first time the party has gained seats in an election since the EU elections of 1999 – that’s seven elections in a row (2 local, 2 provincial, 3 national, 1 European) of losing seats.
Good news for The Greens.
Lincolnshire and central bedfordshire are now in too. Both a Tory retain control, with labour losing a lot of seats to them. Some independent/other gains (though we don’t know who the ‘other’ are yet)
Well Central Bedfordshire is new. But it was nominally Tory.
Sorry, I’m just being a pedant because I’m ridiculously bored.
With just 3 councils counted Labour has already lost 23 councilors according to the BBC – it ain’t looking pretty for them!
I forgive your pedantry Oz, and I won’t even pretend to be as knowledgable on the subject as you. Do you know where there might be an official webpage with the breakdown of results so we can see who the mysterious Independents/Others are?
Apparently there’s a group called Lincolnshire Independents (LI) (which might not be news to Oz
http://www.lincolnshire.gov.uk/elecresultshome.asp?catid=2221
Looking at the Greens results in the UK council elections as of 4.50pm GMT it looks like they have lost 3 of their 5 Oxfordshire seats, but gained one seat in Lancashire bringing them to 2 there.
And I’ve just noticed a new win to the Greens in Cambridgeshire too.
The BBC currently has the Greens picking up an extra 6 seats. Don’t know where though. It also has Labour losing 200 seats, the conservatives picking up 194 seats and the BNP picking up two seats. The LDP has gone down slightly as well. If you have a look at their map(http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/bsp/hi/elections/local_council/09/map/html/map.stm),you can see that Labour has lost control everywhere.
The Greens pick up 5 councillors in Norfolk in the division of Norwich adding to the 2 they already had. A very good result.
With 30 Councils reporting to the BBC the Green Tally stands at:
1 Gloucstershire
1 Bristol
2 Oxford
2 Lancashire
7 Norfolk
1 Cambridgeshire
1 Devon
1 Hertfordshire
If the UK Greens’ council results mirror the EU vote we’re looking at a two-seat gain, and if the success in the Netherlands is an indicator for other European Greens , this will be the best election for EU Green parties ever!
I stopped containing my excitement sometime yesterday afternoon
Thanks for all of the interesting information and comments. Are the British Councils elected by ‘first past the post’ votes like The House of Commons? I am very much looking forward to seeing how the British Greens poll in the European Elections. How close did the Party For Animals get to being elected in the Netherlands for the European Parliament?
English councils are elected by First-Past-the-Post (except for the London Assembly, which is elected by PR). Scottish and Northern Irish councils are elected by STV. Not sure about Wales, I think it’s FPTP.
English councils (other than the London Assembly) are elected by either single member FPTP in three member constituencies on an election every three out of four year basis or multi-member FPTP one every fur years. Most councils have a choice but the London Boroughs are multi-member every four years and the Metropolitan Boroughs have single member every three out of four years.
It’s also worth noting that most of the council elections that were conducted on Thursday were for county councils, as well as a few unitary authorities. Since the urban centres around London, Birmingham and Manchester are not covered by county councils, as well as a number of other Labour-voting towns, those voters who voted in the council elections were biased towards the Conservatives, even before you recognise that Labour-voting Wales and Scotland didn’t elect their councils at all.
The various areas voting aside, for Labor to lose 250 Council seats is still a very poor performance. If you look back to the 2005 General Election quite a few of the Midlands districts that Labor held would now fall the Conservatives. While I agree that the big Labor voting urban areas weren’t electing this time round, Labor has been losing ground for the last few years in Councils across England, which as an indicator means they will be losing supporters and constituency workers across many seats they will need to hold come the next General Election.
But I suppose a rise in the Green number of Councillors to 16 is a start, and the spread is now wider. Perhaps less happy is the winning of 2 Council seats by the BNP. I’d like to see some voting figures on where they have done best, as it may point to where they are most likely to pick up a MEP seats – and given the PVV’s success in the Netherlands, I would not be surprised if they did manage to secure at least 1 MEP.
I’m sceptical about the BNP winning a seat in the European Parliament. I think their best shot was in North-West (indeed they focused their resources on North-West in the last days of the campaign), where I think the Greens have done well.
@Brenton Head
The Party for the Animals polled 3.6%, which just falls short of the quota required for a seat. They didn’t really move much from their 2004 result. Interestingly, they poll twice as well at EU level than they do nationally.
The Greens took 2 new council seats in Suffolk taking their count to 18 for the day. The picture looks even better!