The Oxford West and Abingdon parliamentary constituency was considered very marginal during the election campaign. People got lots of political material through the door. There were also the posters …
Nicola Blackwood, the Conservative candidate, had the biggest posters.
Anybody looking at garden posters beforehand would have thought that Layla Moran, of the Liberal Democrats, was winning here. There were hundreds.
The Labour Candidate, Sally Copley, asked Labour voters, who had previously voted tactically for the Lib-Dems, to vote with their heart and return to Labour. But, anecdotally, some went even further tactically and voted Conservative. They considered Scottish Nationalism an even greater danger to the UK.
UKIP had a quiet campaign here in Abingdon, but quite a few people took their UKIP leaflet and stuck it in their window to show support.
There were areas where Green Party supporters went wild.
During the elections it was amazing to see such queues at polling stations. Thanks to Mike for this one at Trinity.
When all those votes were counted, Nicola Blackwood, of the Conservatives, increased her majority from just over 100, to almost 10,000.
The Conservatives went on to win 8 or the 10 Vale of the White Horse District Council (VWHDC) seats in Abingdon. Conservatives have won 29 of the 38 VWHDC district council seats, and the Lib-Dems 9.
Town Council results are counted tomorrow.
Alastair, 7,159 people who voted Lib Dem in 2010 didn’t vote Lib Dem this time. 2,247 of those former Lib Dem voters instead voted for Nicola Blackwood. 1,275 of them voted for Sally Copley. 2,445 of those former Lib Dem voters voted for the UKIP candidate Alan Harris. More than 1,000 of those votes went to the Greens while some of those former Lib Dems chose the National Health Action Party. Of course, in reality it will have been more complex than that, but it’s not an unreasonable way of looking at the numbers. The idea, then, that the 2,247 who switched from Lib Dem to Conservative were Labour supporters afraid of a Labour pact with the SNP is absurd. Given that Labour increased its share of the vote on Thursday, it’s beyond me how you can have come to the conclusion that Labour voters in Oxford West & Abingdon voted tactically for the Conservatives (or UKIP or the Greens for that matter) in order to block the SNP.
Will be interesting to see in Town council, did people vote for the party and not the person??. Seems to me District followed, national/general election trends.
I agree. Maybe we shouldn’t have local elections at the same time as the national ones.
On the other hand Pat – around 70% of people voted on thursday whereas we normally get around 40% so maybe we should always do it. i do agree it’s a pity though that there was less discussion of local issues in the campaign.
Hi Nigel, I found it interesting that some tactical voters I spoke with were reasoning that way. Not a big sample though.
Regarding the “fear factor” this seems to have been very clever politics, invoke the fear of the SNP to push people to vote for “the devil they know” in terms of the Blues. I have heard a number of people say they voted blue rather than get red and scottish yellow. Well done the spin doctors working on basic herd instincts rather and positive notions of what they are aiming to do.
Given the health issues of our dear leader I imagine there will be a point she has to stand down mid-term which will be interesting.
You see what you’ve done, everyone? Only one day into a new Tory government and packs of Morris dancers are roaming the streets of Abingdon in broad daylight.
ColinB – Town Council results are on the Vale website now. In most of the wards there was a split between Tory and LD so it looks as if voters went for people not party. Overall result 10 Con, 8 LD and 1 Independent.
I wrote to Nicola Blackwood’s office to discuss a significant local issue months ago, but haven’t even received a reply.
I have only written to her twice and the same thing happened before, which was about three years ago. On that occasion, they eventually responded, but the moment had passed.
Nicola comes with a good reputation as a Parliamentary MP, but not responding simply isn’t good enough – we’re all busy people!
I have found the exact opposite – she normally responds speedily and with detail though I’m from a diametrically opposite political viewpoint to her). A big contrast therefore with her predecessor.
I also emailed Nicola Blackwood’s office, I got an Out of Office type reply confirming the receipt of my email and informing me that all emails are dealt with in the order they are received … but no human reply (I’m going back to 2013 here).
Seems like its a bit hit an miss then.
Thanks Hester, I did log onto this site to see, my vote did count, and the person was elected. (A member of Lib-Dem)
So ‘bucked’ the trend 😉