2011 Election Debrief

A special meeting of the local executive and the candidates was held on Tuesday, 17 May 2011. The main purpose of the meeting was to discuss the results and to plan future activities.

From the raw figures, several factors were very clear:

• The overall turnout was very high at almost 50% across the constituency. In some wards (for example, Ellington), turnout exceeded 60%.
• Conservative turnout was particularly high. It appears the “No to AV” campaign got out their vote very successfully.
• Labour turnout was also high, again perhaps motivated by the “No 2 AV” campaign.

Together this meant that, as a party, we lost several seats on Huntingdonshire District Council and some excellent councillors. But in North-West Cambridgeshire only one sitting councillor faced re-election; Mike Baker was successfully re-elected! But the consensus was that this combination of factors is unlikely to occur again soon, and the meeting turned to planning for the future.

In particular, there will be elections every year up to the next general election in 2015:

• 2012 District Council Elections.
  1. Peterborough wards: Barnack, Fletton, Glinton and Wittering, Orton Longueville, Orton Waterville, Orton with Hampton, and Stanground Central.
  2. Huntingdonshire wards: Ramsey, Sawtry, Somersham, Warboys and Bury, Yaxley and Farcet.
• 2013 County Council Elections
• 2014 District Council and European Elections
• 2015 District Council and Parliamentary Elections

We must also be prepared for District by-elections which could occur at any time. So it was decided that we must start planning now and must get candidates and contacts in place for all wards.

Preliminary candidate selection was made for Somersham (Tony Jebson) and Yaxley (Martin Land). Identification of candidates for the remaining Huntingdonshire wards is well under way.

Other actions from the meeting worth noting: preparation of Focus material, updating the website and other electronic communications (guess who got that one:-)) and updating walk routes.

Overall, though the results were depressing, a very positive meeting.