At the last poll it was relatively easy to find out how Shooters Hill voted in the local election (Greens 4%, Tories 29%, Liberals 17%, Labour 48%, Bnp 3%). The ward results were published on the council website.
It wasn’t so easy to find out how locals voted in the general election, with the council only publishing constituency results, however today I received a Liberal Democrat leaflet, and it included this information: Liberals got 15%, Tories 25% (40% combined) and Labour got 42%, so that leaves 18% for the other candidates. [actually the reason I thought these figures were for the national election is because they were different to the published local figures and because of the picture of cleggy, but as it turns out the figures used are local election votes reported in a different way].
I’m not sure why the Liberals are distributing leaflets at the moment, although the fact that this communication coincides with the first full day of the Tory conference might not be just accidental. I emailed the address on the back to ask for more info, but apparently the address doesn’t exist (yet)? (shootershill@greenwich-libdems.org.uk)
Good to see the Lib Dems haven’t lost their taste for dodgy bar charts now they’re in government.
That bar chart is quite dodgy, for a party that want political representation to be proportionate to votes, why did they decide to omit 18% of the poll?
We have been distributing this leaflet to say thank you to those who voted for us and to let residents of Shooters Hill know that they will continue to have a choice. The timing is accidental and we would prefer it to have come out sooner but this was not possible. The bar chart refers to the average % share per party, thereby taking out the bias of 3 candidate parties – this methodology makes the Lib Dems look worse so, kidbookekite and hilly, how on earth can that be seen as dodgy! Secondly it is 18% not shown, not 21% [corrected now thanks, hilly] (i.e. the Green and the BNP) for which apologies but space was at a premium. To be able to show on the front page a result like this – i.e. a loss – and the fact that there is no election for 4 years, I would have thought was open, honest and refreshing. Chris – Greenwich Borough Lib Dems
Many thanks to the lib dem representative for replying. You’re right, I did find the reporting of general election voting figures for Shooters Hill ‘honest and refreshing’ as you say, because I have not been able to get those figures myself. Can you advise what the break down of the actual vote share for the greens, bnp and independents was? Alternatively can you suggest how to get this information directly?
For anyone interested in the wider banter about lib dem graphs, kidbrookekite also writes a separate political blog in which he poked fun at lib dem figure reporting.
It’s not possible to get a breakdown by ward of general election votes, the only published figure is for the whole constituency.
Both you and the Lib Dems are quoting local election figures. I think you added up the total votes for all candidates, while they averaged the votes of the three contenders for Con, Lab & Lib.
Your method understates the level of support for the Greens & BNP who only put up one candidate each while the other method probably overstates it.
Thanks for clearing that up, in previous (local election) counts I was using a sum of council votes cast, and the lib-dem leaflet uses an average vote count per number of party candidates. using their method, *and* not making any more errors with the numbers, I found this: the greens got a 10% share on average, and the bnp got 7%, the rest is as the leaflet states.
Average votes per party
Summed votes per party
It’s shame not to know how shooters hill voted in the general election, although considering the green council candidate for the hill got more votes than the parliamentary candidate, it definitely looked possible that people voted green here but labour in parliament.
Yes you are right that this was the locals only and the BNP and Green % you quote is broadly correct on the methodology we used. There is no local breakdown for the GE unfortunately. The Greens locally do look as if they switched – probably to Labour but some look as if they also switched to us – and the combined poll and the resultant higher turn out across the borough seemed to favour Labour generaly this time.
Re dodgy bar graphs (and no party is without sin on this one!) AV should reduce (but not eradicate) the need for tactical voting and the consequent “can’t win here” leaflets. So another reason to vote yes…..if we get the chance of course!