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May 6, 2005
election post mortem
Well, Barbara Roche lost. I think it's a shame as she was a good local MP and worked really hard for her constituents. Here are some thoughts from a local Labour Party worker:
Iraq (and Blair more generally) were massive issues over on the western side of the constituency and cost us loads of votes. But genuinely it was hardly mentioned over in Wood Green (except approvingly as evidence of Blair's courage and leadership, but then only by Asian and Middle Eastern voters). There the determinants were apathy and possibly immigration. I was harangued at length by a Jamaican about the injustice of all the perks that the latest wave of immigrants get, while his family get nothing - I found it very hard to argue the point, although I've never had a problem doing so with white working class punters; I heard from other activists that they had experienced this same 'pulling up the ladder' phenomenon, so plainly some unlikely people were thinking what Mr Howard was thinking).
A little insight on apathy/tunrout for you. In Woodside (north east of Wood Green), where I spent most of yesterday, we had 40% of the vote just based on our 'promises' (supportive canvass returns); you can add at least another 20% or so to this if you factor up proportionately for those 'unknown'/uncontacted who also voted. This was not untypical, so in the Labour parts of the constituency, I think we were getting about 60% of the vote. However, turnout was barely over 40%, whereas across the whole constituency it was about 60% (so vastly higher in Muswell Hill, Highgate and Crouch End). We lost by 2500 votes. Had turnout in our 5 best wards (out of the ten in the constituency) been at the average, we probably would have won, albeit by a handful of votes. Differential turnout - it's how elections are won and lost. Still, the fact that we lost huge numbers of voters in the leafy west (but not to the Greens, whose vote and share fell) probably means we wouldn't have won anyway, so enough of the post mortem. We've got four more years to get it right and a much stronger Crouch End Labour Party, so it's not all bad.
B-)
Posted by Billy at May 6, 2005 5:15 PM
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