UKIP in Thanet District Council promise to reopen Manston Airport
or at least they did before the election. It almost sounded too easy.
Well, it’s too early to comment on progress but it it not looking so easy.
Thanet District Council tackle Dog Poo
I’m sure the overwhelming majority of residents will be pleased if UKIP can get on top of the dog poo problem.
There is no easy solution as councils around the country have tried to tackle this with the Keep Britain Tidy campaign for at least 30 years (that I know of).
One council tried Doggie Loos in the 1980s, but they weren’t successful.
TDC announce Fixed Penalty notices of £80 for the offenders (or their owners). https://thanet.gov.uk/the-thanet-magazine/press-releases/2015/may/fines-introduced-for-littering-and-dog-fouling/
The challenge will be to catch them, of course.
We have a UKIP Thanet District Council but a Conservative MP
For those who enjoy the maths behind the headlines or have been enjoying #thanetrigged I can share with you this extract from a much larger spreadsheet of results.
In the South Thanet parliamentary constituency there are two wards that are part of Dover District Council (by the way Dover are responsible for elections in that area) and fourteen wards as part of Thanet District Council. These two Dover wards have an electorate of over 11,000 people who overwhelmingly vote conservative. The liberal party are the second choice in this area and the Liberals probably split their vote, backing either the Tory or Labour candidates in the general election.
The local election results are published by ward to it is tricky to compare that to the Parliamentary result for various reasons, nevertheless it gives a good overall picture.
Some things that you should know before studying the figures too closely are:
- wards may have 1,2 or 3 seats with voters being able to cast as many votes up to the number of seats.
- voters, however, often did not cast all their votes.
- In some wards the main parties of Labour, UKIP or Conservatives did not stand as many candidates as seats.
- local factors and personalities can swing votes for local councils.
The remaining 57,000 voters in Thanet South cast an large majority of their votes in the Thanet District Council (TDC) local elections for UKIP councillors (36% of all votes), 31% were cast for Tories and 27% for Labour.
If you take the all the votes cast by the South Thanet residents in the local elections you will find the results closely match the result in the South Thanet Parliamentary election.
- 31% UKIP
- 37% Conservative
- 24% Labour
- 8% Others
Which ever party you vote for the figures on a ward by ward basis are useful.
Who defeated Farage? The areas of Little Stour, Ashstone, Sandwich and Broadstairs.
Ramsgate and Margate welcomed the message from UKIP.
Here is the table: I will make the spreadsheet available for others but I’m still working on it.
| Electorate for Parliamentary Candidate for SOUTH Thanet – Votes cast by Ward in District Council elections May 2015 | ||||||||
| District | Ward | Electorate 2015 |
No of seats | UKIP Votes |
CON Votes |
LAB Votes |
Other Votes |
Total Votes |
| Dover | Little Stour and Ashstone | 5,532 | 3 | 0 | 7,199 | 943 | 2,044 | |
| Dover | Sandwich | 5,644 | 3 | 1,796 | 5,488 | 975 | 1,855 | |
| 11,176 | 6 | 1,796 | 12,687 | 1,918 | 3,899 | 20,300 | ||
| 9 | 62 | 9 | 19 | |||||
| Thanet | Beacon Road | 3,245 | 2 | 1,322 | 1,442 | 1,366 | 95 | |
| Thanet | Bradstowe | 3,229 | 2 | 1,306 | 1,895 | 1,100 | 104 | |
| Thanet | Central Harbour | 5,425 | 3 | 3,138 | 2,062 | 2,879 | 1,929 | |
| Thanet | Cliffsend and Pegwell | 3,723 | 2 | 1,870 | 2,004 | 873 | 278 | |
| Thanet | Cliftonville East | 5,018 | 3 | 4,221 | 3,931 | 1,828 | 429 | |
| Thanet | Cliftonville West | 4,429 | 3 | 3,029 | 1,636 | 2,408 | 551 | |
| Thanet | Eastcliff | 4,819 | 3 | 3,090 | 1698 | 2,551 | 985 | |
| Thanet | Kingsgate | 1,759 | 1 | 370 | 675 | 227 | 0 | |
| Thanet | Nethercourt | 3,390 | 2 | 1,773 | 664 | 1,377 | 0 | |
| Thanet | Newington | 3,186 | 2 | 1,729 | 753 | 1,441 | 0 | |
| Thanet | Northwood | 4,809 | 3 | 3909 | 1,993 | 2,414 | 0 | |
| Thanet | Sir Moses Montefiore | 3,462 | 2 | 1,600 | 1,062 | 1,536 | 261 | |
| Thanet | St Peters | 5,515 | 3 | 3,346 | 4,272 | 2,694 | 114 | |
| Thanet | Viking | 5,397 | 3 | 3,027 | 4,893 | 2,856 | 230 | |
| TDC Total | 57,406 | 34 | 33,730 | 28,980 | 25,550 | 4,976 | 93,236 | |
| exc dover | Vote percent | 36 | 31 | 27 | 5 | |||
| inc dover | total all | 68,582 | 40 | 35,526 | 41,667 | 27,468 | 8,875 | 113,536 |
| 31 | 37 | 24 | 8 |
Of course, in these figures many people had 3 votes, some had 2 and a small number only had one. If you weight them as if everyone had three votes the gap between votes for UKIP and Conservatives becomes wider, 40% and 30%. For the reasons listed above, however, this method of weighting can’t be guaranteed to give us accurate or meaningful information. It could be more revealing to look at individual wards in more detail. I shall do that in future posts.
UKIP take control of Thanet District Council
An historic moment in history unfolded on Saturday 9th as the votes were counted and results revealed of the election that took place two days earlier.
As we went into the election the council comprised
- the Labour Group 26;
- Conservative Group 22;
- Independent Group 3;
- Thanet Independent Group 2 ;
- UKIP 2;
- 1 Non affiliated Councillor.
There are 56 Councillors in total.
Then in May 2015 the electorate, of almost 94,000, voted for the first every UKIP controlled district council anywhere. 37% of votes cast were for UKIP candidates, 31% for Conservatives and 24% for Labour. 8% of votes were for others including independents and members of the Green party.
In contrast there were far fewer votes and far few candidates to choose from at the previous election in 2011.
