Election Results & Today's Plan

I'm sure everyone has read about the Labour landslide victory last night at the election results already, but just in case you've missed it, here's a list of all duly elected members of the council.

Also, I'll be doing a radio interview later on today with StaffsLive at around 3pm.

And later on as part of my StokeElect2011 coverage, I'll be doing some statistics crunching.

AND hopefully I'll be updating with AV results along the way!

Here are the Stoke-on-Trent City Council election results by ward:

Labour 34
Independent 7
Conservative 2
Unaffiliated 1

Wards	Elected Candidates	Elected Party or Parties
Abbey Hulton and Townsend	Councillor Gwen Hassall	Labour
	Councillor Adrian Knapper	Labour
Baddeley, Milton and Norton	Jack Brereton	Conservative Party
	Andy Lilley	Labour
	Councillor Duncan Walker	Labour
Bentilee and Ubberley	Sheila Pitt	Labour
	Alison Ruth Wedgwood	Labour
Birches Head and Central Forest Park	Paul Derrick Breeze	unaffiliated
	Mark Joseph Meredith	Labour
Blurton East	Glenys Ward	Independent
Blurton West and Newstead	Neil Douglas Day	Labour
Boothen and Oakhill	Andy Platt	Labour
Bradeley and Chell Heath	Gurmeet Singh Kallar	Labour
Broadway and Longton East	Councillor Tom Reynolds	Labour
Burslem Central	Alan Edward Dutton	Labour
Burslem Park	Councillor Joy Garner	Labour
Dresden and Florence	Shazad Hussain	Labour
Eaton Park	Terry Crowe	Labour
Etruria and Hanley	Councillor Majid Khan	Labour
Fenton East	Councillor Paul Shotton	Labour
Fenton West and Mount Pleasant	Karen Christine Clarke	Labour
Ford Green and Smallthorne	Councillor Matt Wilcox	Labour
Goldenhill and Sandyford	Martin Garner	Labour
Great Chell and Packmoor	Councillor Janine Bridges	Labour
	Ann James	Independent
Hanford and Trentham	Councillor Terence Follows	Independent
	Peter Frederick Hayward	Independent
Hanley Park and Shelton	Councillor Amjid Wazir	Labour
Hartshill and Basford	Shaun Patrick Pender	Labour
Hollybush and Longton West	Kathleen Mary Banks	Labour
Joiners Square	Alastair Scott Watson	Labour
Lightwood North and Normacot	Councillor Bagh Ali	Labour
Little Chell and Stanfield	Councillor David Conway	Independent
Meir Hay	Muhammad Aumir	Labour
Meir North	Councillor Ruth Rosenau	Labour
Meir Park	Councillor Abi Brown	Conservative Party
Meir South	Deborah Ann Wheeldon	Labour
Moorcroft	Councillor Mohammed Pervez	Labour
Penkhull and Stoke	Councillor Randolph Conteh	Independent
Sandford Hill	Councillor Olwen Hamer	Labour
Sneyd Green	Councillor Debra Gratton	Labour
Springfields and Trent Vale	Councillor Sarah Hill	Labour
Tunstall	Lee Wanger	Independent
Weston Coyney	Matthew Thomas Fry	Labour

Election Fever or Flop?

It's not only the weather that's giving me mixed messages today. I've found it very hard to gauge the general atmosphere towards the elections today...

I woke up to a grey sky and switched onto BBC Breakfast to be told about fruit orchards and some new films and TV dramas. I checked my twitter feed, and by 10ish it sounded like Polling Stations across the country had been very empty. Nevertheless, the sun was trying to break through the clouds and I made my commute to work.

In the office, there was zero mention of local elections or the referendum all day.

By the time I was commuting home it had rained and it wasn't only the atmosphere in the clouds which changed. My twitter feed was tweeting tweets suggesting attendance at polling stations was on the up. It didn't seem so at my local station as I walked past though.

Then it chucked it down around half 5 in the afternoon. As soon as the rain cleared, I thought I'd go have a look at my station again, and to my surprise there was a small queue inside and a fairly steady flow of voters young and old trickling in and out the station like the summer rain trickling off the nearby leaves.

Now, I wait anxiously like many others in Stoke-on-Trent to see if it tongiht will bring us 'shephard's delight' or a heavy thuderstorm...

SoT Council Elections - The last 15 years of confusion

Hello all,

As I've mentioned before, I'm not a Stokie and only moved here recently. It didn't take me long to pick up the political hype of the area and it's got me hooked. Because I'm analysing the May 2011 elections - I thought it best to research a brief history of Council elections and get to grips with the system in place here.

What a headache that's caused me!

I'm writing this post to summarise my findings for the changes implemented in the last 15 years. I've also been looking more at specific ward results over the years, but this post is just about the election/councillor/wards systems.

I've used legislation.gov to find most of this information out and a bit of brain-power to work things out. If I've got something wrong, please tell me!

1995

The big reform of the Stoke-on-Trent local government system happened in 1995 when the 'Staffordshire (City of Stoke-on-Trent) (Structural and Boundary Changes) Order' was enacted.
It meant that Stoke-on-Trent would become a county in its own right and not be part of Staffordshire (in a legal sense) any long

er. This would mean a transfer of most responsibilities (excluding the police for example) to Stoke-on-Trent City Council.

This would all happen in reality on April 1 1997.
In 1996, elections would be held to elect a completely new set of councillors (although I believe they could stand to be elected again? Will be checking it out at the City Archives)

These 60 Councillors across 20 wards would then hold elections every year for one-third of the Council. In practice, it meant that the councillor in each ward with the lowest number of votes in 1996 would have their place put up for election (they could stand again for re-election) in 1998 - after two years of service.

In 1999, the councillor with the second lowest votes from back in 1996 would have their seat contested again.
And in 2000, the original most voted-for candidate in 1996 would have their seat contested.

I've put those words

into a table to make things a bit clearer on screen...
Councillor A received the most votes, B the second and C the least of the three.

As you can see, after four years, a whole new selection of councillors is possible. But remember, councillors could stand for re-election. So 'D' could in fact be 'C' for example.

2001
By this point, the previous system had proved effective in that there was no major malfunctions in the system. However, The City of Stoke-on-Trent (Electoral Changes) Order 2001 made a slight alteration as well as a few boundary shifts.

It also meant the system would restart with a whole new Council (an 'all-out' election')

The pattern would now be that there would be no two-year grace period for all three councillors and the least successful of the three would ha

ve their seat contested after 1 year.
To keep the 4-year term rule going, this would mean no election further down the time-frame as follows...

This all followed in reality with the lack of election in 2009 (mirroring 2005 because of the 4-year rule).

2009
By 2009, many had grown tired of voting every year for just one councillor. The City of Stoke-on-Trent (Scheme of Elections) Order 2009 is a very small piece of legislation which makes a big difference.

From 2011 (this election!) the "election every year by thirds" system would be abolished in favour for four-yearly all-out elections. A much simpler way of selecting a Council. As with the previous reforms, all current councillors lose their seat in may but may stand again.

2011

The Stoke-on-Trent (Electoral Changes) Order 2011 made the final update to the rules just in time for the May election. The Order changed the boundaries and number of councillors electable to each ward - the changes I'm sure you're all familiar with as they have been the subject of much media and political coverage in the local area.

Read the orders for yourself here: http://bit.ly/gmXpDT

So there you have a brief guide to how Stoke-on-Trent has had its elections for the last 15 years. Who knows how we'll be voting in 15 more to come?

How much are the Big 3 in London thinking about local elections?

With local elections following almost a year on from the formation of the Coalition government on a national scale, just how important are the local elections of councillors to the big 3 in London?

Many newspapers and political commentators are suggesting this will be a big test in the confidence of the coalition government and an early indication as to how far Labour has come in its big recovery since losing power.

The key factor I keep in mind however is the fact that these are local ward elections and not MP elections. Voters aren't voting on a local to national stage but on a very local stage which will (in my opinion) affect the way a lot of people approach voting. It certainly does for me.

"Local elections in England are due to take place on 5 May 2011 in:

36 Metropolitan Boroughs in England – all by thirds

49 Unitary authorities in England – 19 by thirds and 30 all-up (including Stoke-on-Trent)

194 Second-tier districts in England– 70 by thirds and 124 all-up

26 district councils in Northern Ireland – all-up

Elections to the National Assembly for Wales, Scottish Parliament and Northern Ireland

Assembly will also take place on 5 May 2011.

The Government intends for these elections to be held alongside a referendum on voting

reform, in order to minimise the number of occasions on which people are asked to vote."

Click here for original source: Parliament briefing on local elections

Now I won't get out a calculator and them all up but that looks like a lot of councillors and elections to me!

So how important is the local election to the big national party?

With under a month to go till voting begins you'd expect some sort of coverage on the parties' websites so I had a look (in alphabetical order to show no bias of course!). As much as the subject enthuses me, I haven't all the time in the world to devote to StokeElect2011 so I've done this based solely on the home pages and direct links from the home page's articles etc.

Conservatives
The main headline of the Conservative party's website (April 9 at 1300) is (and in rather large font) 'CONSERVATIVES CONTEST 94% OF LOCAL ELECTION SEATS' with a big arrow leading to this article (click here) explaining how the Conservatives are dominating the field in local elections nationally with a nice picture of Minister Warsi looking informed and quotes from her regarding the elections in the article.

Good effort I'd say!

Labour
The Labour page only really contains one clue they're thinking about the local elections - the 'Your Voice' section at the top of the home page. You find a small paragraph confirming that Labour Councillors will be standing against coalition cuts and a 2 minute video of Ed Milliband reflecting on his school days, his Dad (you can see the family resemblance!) and talking to all sorts of people around the country. (Watch it on youtube here) It bigs up the power of the people but doesn't actually refer to local elections in any way. This gives the Labour webpage the overall impression that the elections are happening but there is no huge effort on a national level to address them.

Liberal Democrats
The first thing you notice about the Lib Dem home page is that it contains a lot more in a lot less space. Their homepage is a little more interactive with a rotating news bar at the top containing 5 lead stories - two of which refer to the AV vote system and how to join the campaign for fairer votes. There's nothing to do with local elections or councillors to be easily seen though.

Despite this, the Lib Dems are the only party who have a whole website dedicated to Stoke-on-Trent rather than a particular MP or campaign in Stoke-on-Trent. Or at least this is how it appears if you type 'Conservatives Stoke', 'Labour Stoke' and 'Lib Dems Stoke' into google.

Overall
Overall I think it's safe to say the Conservatives have clearly taken the lead when it comes to their home page reflecting local elections as a high priority. Interestingly enough, and I try to remain a political commentator only, the Conservatives point out in their article linked above that Labour has failed to field a candidate in nearly 30% of seats nationally - despite their big comeback.

But the question at the end of the day is how much does it matter?

Are voters in local elections swayed by what they read and hear about 'Party X' in the news every day on a national scale or do people shut that all away and focus on which individuals they want running their local Council?

What do you think? Comments are free below with no need to register.
Also, this article only looks at one teeny aspect of the Big 3 in London - their websites.
Other factors contribute to their attitude and portrayal to the public of course!

Location of Polling Stations

If you're not sure if your local polling station in Stoke-on-Trent has moved with the ward boundary changes this year, take a look at this .pdf document produced by the council.

It is the bottom file under the list: Related Files

Click here to follow the link!

Unfortunately it isn't ordered in a very reader-friendly way and includes rather confusing codes referring to 'descriptions of persons entitled to vote'.

Also it is not clear which of the new wards (or the previous wards) each polling station represents -especially confusing for someone who hasn't voted in Stoke-on-Trent before.

Hopefully a more understandable source will become available or more information delivered direct to the public.

Nevertheless, a good source if you want to check where the action will be (as long as you are familiar with Stoke-on-Trent geography!)

New Wards - Maps & Demographics

Follow this link here to have a nose at some demographic detail of your local ward.

City Council Ward Demographic Pages

The Stoke-on-Trent City Council website is hard to navigate a lot of the time (in my opinion) but there are some real gems to be found inside.

The link above takes you to a rather empty looking page but in fact the list on the right can take you on to view .pdf files containing the following based on data collected by the Council:

Household estimates
Population (incl. Male/Female) estimates
Age category population breakdown estimates
Household Income averages (incl. % with <£10k and >£50k)
Index of deprivation
Employment %s
Ethnicity
And socio-demographics (in other words what type of people live in which types of houses)

Fantastic for researching your local area and the sorts of people living in it.

Especially good for election candidates in understanding their areas more.

Welcome

Welcome to the blog extension of the @StokeElect2011 twitter account.

Here you'll find some extra bits and pieces from around the web as well as any material I create myself regarding the upcoming elections on May 5 2011.

Stoke-on-Trent citizens will be taking to the poll booths to vote not only on the national UK referendum about the adoption of Alternative Vote but also to elect an entire new array of councillors to the City Council.

To mix things up even more this May, ward boundaries and councillor numbers have changed resulting in a drop of total councillors but an increase in the number of wards. The result of this: smaller wards with independent councillors to represent.

There are exceptions - with 5 wards keeping the traditional two-councillor election and 1 ward having a three-councillor election.