THANK YOU! Lib Dems Celebrate Vote Increase in our Constituency (Kensington and Chelsea Liberal Democrats)

Kensington and Chelsea Liberal Democrats <info@kensingtonandchelsealibdems.org.uk>

THANK YOU! Lib Dems Celebrate Vote Increase in our Constituency

June 12, 2004 1:24 PM

Cllr. Kingsley with GLA candidate Francesco Fruzza outside the polling station at Ashburnham Primary School

Cllr. Kinglsey with GLA candidate Franceso Fruzza at the polling station in the World's End

Ken Livingstone may still be Mayor of London, but his power has been dampened by the introduction of a fifth Lib Dem GLA member, and the share of the vote for Liberal Democrats across the London West Central constituency, which includes Kensington and Chelsea, has risen significantly since the last London elections in 2000.

Simon Hughes has increased the Lib Dem share of the mayoral vote in our area by over 6000 votes, gaining 16,204 local first preference votes.

Across London as a whole, Simon gained 284,645 first preference votes and a massive 465,704 second preference votes - far more than any other candidate. Indeed, almost a quarter of all of London's second-preference votes, and 14.8% of all the first preference votes, went to Simon. 80,000 more people gave the Lib Dems their first preference vote than did so in the mayoral election in 2000.

In the GLA first-past-the-post elections in our West Central constituency, Lib Dem Francesco Fruzza gained 17,478 votes with 15.1% of the vote, an increase of more than 3000 local votes since 2000.

Cllr. Kingsley with GLA candidate Francesco Fruzza at the London West Central Count 2004

Jenny and Francesco at the vote count on 11th June

In the top-up GLA elections in our area, the Lib Dem vote was 17,753, an increase of over 5250 votes or a 3.5% increase of vote share since 2000. The Lib Dem top-up vote won a total of 14.6% of the vote locally. This contributed to the addition of Dee Doocey on to the GLA assembly, bringing our total number of GLA members to five. Labour lost two, and the number of Tory seats remained unchanged. The only other party to gain GLA seats was the UK Independence Party, though an interesting fact is that in our area of London, there were more spoilt ballot papers cast than there were GLA votes for UKIP in the first-past-the-post or top-up elections!

Nationally, the Liberal Democrats have overtaken Labour in share of the vote for the first time in living memory, pushing them into third place. Meanwhile the Conservatives have done no better than they did with William Hague as their Leader in 2000... and look what happened to them in the subsequent 2001 general election.

It has been an exhausting but fulfilling election campaign, and Cllr Jennifer Kingsley and chair of our local party Vanessa Giles, would like to give their sincere thanks to all our supporters, members, and of course to Simon Hughes, Francesco Fruzza and all the other Lib Dem candidates who fought so hard in London for the GLA Elections. Our vote is up because local people are increasingly realising there IS an alternative to the tired politics of the past.

Photographs from polling day can be viewed in the Gallery.