Turnouts

posted by: Nick Lowles | on: Friday, 5 June 2009, 14:31

Just passing the time while I wait for some results so I made a couple of calls. It seems that turnout in Oldham was 28.9% and Manchester at somewhere between the 22-23% level. While these are down on the 2004 European Elections (which were held on the same day as all-out local elections and with a all-postal vote) it is considerably higher than the 1999 election, where there were no local elections.

In 1999 Oldham East and Saddleworth had a turnout of 22.4% while Oldham West & Royton had 18.6%.

In Manchester, the turnout in 1999 was even lower. Manchester Blakley had 14.7%, Manchester Central had 12.1%, Manchester Gorton 13.0% and Manchester Withington 17.9%.

Of course there is no proof that this increase was helpful to us but there are a couple of stories I've picked up which are encouraging. There was heavy voting in Manchester Withington, in the South of the City, where there are unlikely to be too many BNP voters. It also seems that the student turnout was much higher than usual, which is also encouraging.

Just spoken to Martin Salter, MP for Reading West. He said that based on the verifications of the ballot papers the BNP polled very poorly in Reading but there was a very high UKIP vote.