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It was a fairly good night for the Conservatives in London – three of London’s eight MEPs were returned as Conservatives.  Congratulations to Charles Tannock, Syed Kamall and Marina Yannakoudakis on their elections.

It’s also pleasing that the BNP did not win a seat here.  Though disturbing that they managed to take two seats in the north.  Personally, I’m most depressed about the seat they won in Yorkshire and Humber since that area also covers the part of Linconshire in which I was born.

The results in Wandsworth were very good for the Conservatives, where we got just over twice as many votes as the second place Labour party.  In fact, it generally followed my impression from the doorstep.  The Greens took third place, beating the Liberal Democrats into 4th.  The BNP came seventh – and polled much worse in Wandsworth than in London as a whole, in keeping with my feeling that Wandsworth is generally an inclusive borough.  They certainly have nothing like the level of support to even come close to seriously contesting a council seat.

Having said that, one BNP vote is one too many.  While some are quick to condemn any BNP voter, I do not believe most are motivated by racism (a characteristic the BNP do a lot to hide) but instead because they have concerns or frustrations the main parties have failed to address.  Certainly something the major parties in the North West and Yorkshire and the Humber need to consider.

Parties getting more than 1,000 votes in Wandsworth were:

Party Wandsworth votes Wandsworth %age London votes London %age
Conservative 26,819 39.04% 479,037 27.36%
Labour 13,041 18.98% 372,590 21.28%
Green 9,050 13.17% 190,589 10.88%
Liberal Democrat 8,240 11.99% 240,156 13.72%
UKIP 4,441 6.46% 188,440 10.76%
Christian Party 1,598 2.33% 51,336 2.93%
BNP 1,588 2.31% 86,420 4.94%

You can get the full results for Wandsworth from the Wandsworth Council website and for London from the BBC News website

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A fairly brisk start to voting in my patch, certainly higher than past European elections, but it died off considerably during the day and I hear that other places didn’t even get the good start!
 
Of course, voting does tend to reflect travel patterns, so it picking up again with the school run and the start of the evening rush hour.
 
We’ve also seen the first sign of opposition activity as Labour start to deliver their eve of poll leaflets!
 
If you’ve not voted yet you have until 10pm when polls will close. If you are in Wandsworth and don’t know where your polling station is you can find it at http://tr.im/wwvote You don’t need your polling card to vote.

Posted via email from jamescousins’s posterous. Want to know what this is? Then click here.

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Polls have been open since 7am and trade has been brisk (though getting quieter now commuters have commuted). What’s more the trade has been friendly, the Conservative vote is clearly motivated.
 
Labour don’t seem to be running a full polling day operation and haven’t put people outside polling stations. This is actually a real disappointment.
 
First, in one of those oddities of politics tellers from the parties (the people hanging around outside polling stations) work together on election day. We aren’t there to try and persuade you to vote for us. Instead we try and gather electoral roll numbers so, if you are a supporter, we know we don’t need to remind you to vote later. Obviously it makes sense for the tellers to help each other doing this.
 
Second, it’s actually really nice to have someone to chat with during the quiet periods!

Posted via email from jamescousins’s posterous. Want to know what this is? Then click here.

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Today is election day and I will be spending all of it on the campaign trial.

If you are interested in how election day is going I’ll certainly be Twittering – you can follow me @jamescousins.  I might also do a few Posterous blog posts, if sufficiently interesting events and spare time coincide.

If you live in Wandsworth polling stations are open from 7am until 10pm. You don’t need your poll-card to vote, just turn up at the polling station and give the staff your name and address. If you don’t know where your polling station is the Wandsworth website will provide the location in return for your postcode.

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Yesterday I highlighted some of the things canvassing is not. Today I want to go through some of the things canvassing is, and my thoughts at the end of this particular campaign.  While the media will concentrate on Cabinet resignations and pressure on Brown, the life of a party activist is less glamorous and less dramatic; we knock on doors and talk to people.

Canvassing to identify support
At its simplest level canvassing is about identifying your supporters so you can encourage them to vote. If you imagine a constituency in which exactly half the population support the Conservatives and exactly half support the Labour party the winner would be decided by who was best at getting their supporters out to vote for them.

Canvassing as an opinion poll
But it also works as a simple opinion poll. Because we are continually canvassing on issues and support we can track changes. It isn’t as statistically valid as proper opinion research, we can’t select a ‘representative’ sample that reflects the country as a whole, but we do get an idea of the way things are going. If you canvass ten people and one has switched, that’s a 10% swing.

I will say from the outset that I don’t actually know any of the figures in Wandsworth or Battersea, I’m no longer involved at that level of political campaigning – I’m just an activist who goes where I’m told. But that doesn’t mean I don’t get a feel from the doorstep.

The feel on the doorstep
And that doorstep feel is an important indicator. The 1992 general election was the first I was actively involved in, and many will remember that, when called, it was seen as being incredibly close. A few days before the actual election one of the older and wiser heads in the association I was involved in told me that we’d win nationally. Not because of the polls, but because “you can see people aren’t ready for Labour”. I wrote it off until some months later when Neil Kinnock, in a documentary interview, said he knew he was going to lose not because of any polling, but because when he met members of the public he could “see it in their eyes”.

Its important to remember that while opinion polls give broad projections, it’s the people who go and vote that decide the result of elections, not the people who answer pollsters.

These are my opinions based on my own experience and during this campaign almost all my canvassing has been in Wandsworth, most in Battersea and the largest part of that in my own ward. If someone tells you its totally different next door in Lambeth or Richmond, they may well be right.

The BNP
It’s a real pleasure to be able to say that I’ve only canvassed a few BNP supporters, indeed I could count on the fingers of one hand the people who have told me they are voting for the BNP. In Wandsworth, at least, they are not a political force. Hopefully that is the case everywhere else in the country.

Minor parties
Again, these have not featured on the doorstep, which is totally at odds with the recent polls showing UKIP in third place ahead of Labour. They may well achieve that level of support, but it won’t be in Wandsworth.

By far the most popular of the smaller parties has been the Greens. Not a huge number of them, to be sure, but certainly more than any other party.

I’m also going to include the Liberal Democrats in this category, although I do so with some caution. Wandsworth has traditionally been a two party borough, there are no Lib Dems on the council, although there are some areas in the borough where the Lib Dems are active. It might be because I’ve not been in those areas that I’ve met so few intending to vote that way.

Labour
It’s safe to say Labour are not having a good time of it. And it shows on the doorstep.

Their vote is definitely soft. Many who rejected the Conservatives in favour of Blair’s Labour Party are returning to the Conservatives if they hadn’t already. But I think the real problem Labour face are their supporter who just won’t go out and vote. It was very much the problem we faced in 1997, people wouldn’t vote against us, but we couldn’t get them to vote for us either. Around three million people fewer people voted in 1997 than had in 1992. Less people voted Labour in 1997 than had voted Conservative in 1992. Blair won not just because Tories switched to him, but also because they stayed home in huge numbers.

Oddly, one of the ways I see this relates to ‘Myth 3’ from yesterday’s post. It means that people can tell us they aren’t voting for us, but give us good news as well: “I always voted Labour, but I’m not doing that again.”

I find it hard to believe this isn’t going to be Labour’s 1997. The electorate want to punish Labour, and will; the question is whether they will be satisfied by this election, or whether the anger will carry over into the general election when Brown or his successor calls it.

Who’s winning?
Easy one for me. The Conservatives. As a Conservative each successive election since 1997 has been nicer than the last, but the change has been much more marked over the past two years. People are pleased to see us and enthusiastic about voting for us again.

Of course, the electoral system for this election means it’s impossible to predict a result. The final scores depend as much on the spread of votes between minor parties as it does on the Conservatives’ lead. I wouldn’t put a bet on the numbers of seats. But I’d put a bet on Cameron being the leader with the biggest smile when the results come in on Sunday.

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This is my first weekly report-back on the blog.  It is currently a trial, and you can read some of my thoughts about it in a blog-post I wrote before commencing the reports.  It is not intended to be, nor can it be, an exhaustive report of what I have been doing during the week as a councillor, above all, the nature of a councillor’s work means a lot of the work done for ward residents remains confidential. It is very much a selected highlights of the week.

Neighbourhood Watch Strategy
Much of the start of the week was taken up with final preparations for the Neighbourhood Watch strategy – which combined with an unsettled baby – managed to dominate much of the bank-holiday weekend.  I’m rather proud of Neighbourhood Watch in Wandsworth, which has been a key partner in making Wandsworth inner London’s safest borough.  The new strategy will be launched next week, and enhances the role of Neighbourhood Watch as well as, for the first time, setting out what Watches, the council, police and other partners can expect from each other to help make Wandsworth even safer.

Meeting with Wandsworth Chamber of Commerce
Along with the Leader of the Council I regularly meet with the Wandsworth Chamber of Commerce to chat about issues in the borough. Perhaps unsurprisingly the biggest topic of discussion was the recession. I have tended towards the bearish when discussing the recession – thinking it will be long and hard. However, a lot of the anecdotal evidence I’ve heard suggests the recession is focussed on the retail sector and while property and construction are showing signs of recovery the retail sector is going to be struggling for some time to come. What was pleasing, however, is that Wandsworth’s businesses still seem fairly optimistic about the future.

CompeteFor London 2012 event
On Thursday I attended and said a few words at a CompeteFor event in Wandsworth. Almost as evidence of business confidence in Wandsworth around 150 businesses attended the event in Wandsworth Town Hall to hear how they could bid for work associated with the 2012 Olympics. When you often assume businesses are struggling to think what they will be doing for the next three months, it was great to see businesses keen to bid for work for the next three years and beyond. If you are a business interested in bidding for Olympic related work then you should visit the official Olympic site at london2012.com/business and CompeteFor.com which is handling the online bidding process.

Campaigning
One of the drawbacks of starting these reports now is that the council tends slow during summer, while we don’t have a ‘recess’ as such there a few formal meetings over summer. In addition, the council enters a purdah during election campaigns which means many meetings and events have to be cancelled. And, of course, that gap gets filled by campaigning by those of us unfortunate enough to be political animals. When I’ve not been at the town hall this week I’ve been on the doorstep (maybe even your’s). It has been an interesting campaign, perhaps for the wrong reasons with the expenses scandal. I hope to find time to post some reflections on it next week.

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A few people have had the dreadful BNP leaflet land on their doormat recently and asked me if this means the BNP is active in Battersea.  Luckily, I think the answer is no.

In each case the leaflet has been their badly researched election communication featuring a Polish Spitfire, American models and an elderly Italian couple.  Given the BNP’s references to the Second World War on the leaflet I think the inclusion of the Spitfire from the 303 Polish Fighter Squadron (who claimed the highest number of kills during the Battle of Britain, and were certainly one of the most effective squadrons in the war) particularly amusing.  The BNP’s argument is, essentially, that the brave Polish pilots defended our country from invasion so we could refuse the brave Polish pilots’ descendants any right to live here.

So how did the leaflet get through your door?  Well, it was delivered by Royal Mail.

Every party in a European Election (and every candidate in a General Election) has to right to have one ‘election communication’ delivered to each elector in the relevant constituency.  The major parties, Conservative and Labour, have been individually addressing their leaflets.  Minor parties, like the BNP, take the simpler option of having one leaflet delivered per household.  The Royal Mail delivered leaflets can be identified as they will carry the words ‘Election Communication’ along with the constituency, type and date of election – in this case the London constituency, European Parliamentary election and 4 June respectively.

So, as far as I know, the BNP do not have activists working in Wandsworth.  But that does not mean we should rest easy.  The leaked BNP membership lists revealed a small number of members in Wandsworth and the BNP have boasted about successful meetings within the borough, so it’s worth keeping an eye out for activity (I’d be interested to know if anyone has heard from them).  It’s then for the mainstream political parties to provide an alternative to their anger-fuelled policies.

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It may well have escaped your notice but the European elections are being held at the beginning of June.  If you are a registered voter in Wandsworth you should be getting your poll card this weekend.

The poll cards will be delivered to each elector between Saturday and Sunday, so keep an eye out for them.  They are large cards containing your details, details of the election and a map of your polling station.  Although you don’t need the cards to vote they often speed up the process.

If you have any problems you can ring Wandsworth’s electoral services from Tuesday on 020 8871 6023.