Westcountryman

Results in summary:

UKIP gain 2 and retain 2 on Newcastle-under-Lyme (4 in total):

BBC NEWS | Election 2008 | Newcastle-Under-Lyme council

UKIP gain 1 on Hartlepool, and retain another (2 in total):

BBC NEWS | Election 2008 | Hartlepool council

UKIP gain on Dudley (1 in total):

BBC NEWS | Election 2008 | Dudley council

UKIP lose 1 on Slough (Now 0):

BBC NEWS | Election 2008 | Slough council

UKIP retain 1 on Stevenage (1 in total):

BBC NEWS | Election 2008 | Stevenage council

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Manus haec inimica tyrannis ense petit placidam sub libertate quietam - "This hand of mine, which is hostile to tyrants, seeks by the sword quiet peace under liberty."

mrabody

Trust one of the serial moaners to come along and try to **** in our cornflakes. All the anecdotal evidence suggests that we have had some good results from all over the country, be it in Essex, Yorkshire, Staffordshire, Liverpool. Considering the unpopularity of Labour and the kicking the electorate seems to be intent on giving them, we have done well to win seats when a stampede to the Tories was the likeliest choice by the electorate.

The only thing I am sorry to see was fewer UKIP candidates standing than I had hoped for.

steve fowler

I agree. I was in Australia last year when when got no wins at all, I consider this year winning two,three whatever seats is better then not getting any at all.

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RULE BRITANNIA BRITANNIA RULES THE WAVES, BRITONS NEVER EVER SHALL BE SLAVE'S.

Never give in - never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.
Winston Churchill.

When Labour won the 1997 General Election, Enoch Powell told his wife that the electorate had voted to break up the United Kingdom.

mrabody

It's not just the seats that we are winning but the good results we are getting even when we aren't winning. In those areas where we did win seats, we got lots of other good results as well. And in other areas such as Rotherham we also had some very good results. This means that at least some UKIP branches are beginning to get things right. The challenges for next the next couple of years will be to get this knowledge disseminated to branches elsewhere so that we can put up a good fight in next year's County Council elections and 2010, and to get our membership up. In many respects it is our lack of active members which is our greatest handicap now. Outside of London it seems relatively easy for UKIP to get at least 5% of the votes cast in a local election without too much effort, and if we can get more committed candidates and volunteers throughout the country we will begin to get noticed and we will also begin to win a great deal more seats. Down in Lewes our priority over the coming months is to run a membership drive modeled on the one that Christchurch did with such success.

One thing that is becoming readily apparent is the decline of the Labour Party and the Lib Dems in various areas (the Tories are enthusiastic and going from strength to strength for the time being). In Woking Labour could only put up a few candidates, and here in Runnymede the Lib Dems only stood in six wards. And we seem to be beating Lib Dems and Labour candidates quite regularly throughout the country.

marcus

Well done guys. Was dissapointed with our UKIP result here in London but it is nice to know we have made some gains around the country.

blueblood1920

UKIP stood in one seat in Liverpool, against myself and lost votes. I think you may mean Sefton.

prober

Has anyone had a chance yet to compile /list all UKIP non London 450 ish results from seats contested , and what the average % result is compared to the claimed 12.5% of 2007 ?

Independent UKIP

Where did you get the extra 0.5% from Prober? The 12% claim included lots of areas not holding elections this year (and where there were many multi-member wards) and was not it appears believed by you in the first place. What will be of interest to me is comparing the actual results from last year with the actual results of this year.

What percentage do you understand that UKIP received last year in the areas also holding elections this year?

blueblood1920

BNP got 21% in the East Midlands this year, but very few councils had elections.

prober

Ind UKIP has a point. Comparisons with 2007 are difficult because of many multiseat wards 2007 and double/treble counting in many of these to give a phony 12% or so result. But its not impossible to unravel into a baseline % of voters who gave one of their votes to UKIP in this type of ward.

A clear comparison would be single seat ward results 2007 with same wards contested 2008 where no change in substansive other candidate parties occurred . This may be 100 out of the 450 results. Enough to give confidence statistically.

There are an array of important measures of success of UKIP strategy & performance both in % and in performance against other parties eg :-

% of wards nationally available versus % stood

% who came 2nd , % over 10% , .... havnt a clue what the result is .

% of "active" wards versus passive (and correlation with % results )

NO of wards ( and councils ) in which 1 of the big 3 were beaten.

Presumably UKIP Local Election Mission Control has done all this number crunching for it's post mortem and decision what to do about it.

Until shown otherwise ( hopefully upwards) I reckon single seat 2007 average results were nearer 8 or 9% than 12% and that 2008 showed no improvement.

The real success was individual branches (on their own and despite apathy and no plan at the top ) putting up much more candidates than 2007 in terms of % of seats up for election. This gave UKIP exposure to be built on by UKIP getting it's act together 2009.