Monday 7 May 2012

Carmarthenshire County Council Elections - the numbers

It is easy enough to tot up the numbers of votes cast for Plaid Cymru, Labour and the other political parties, but calculating the Independent vote is altogether more tricky because of course there are different kinds of Independents.

For the purposes of this exercise, the Independent camp is divided between "official" Independents, i.e. those who either do support the closet Tory Meryl Gravell Independent group or who might be expected to, and "Independent Independents" who are truly unaffiliated. This is by no means an exact science, but the picture which emerges is almost certainly not far off the mark.

The breakdown of votes cast by political group, with numbers rounded up or down for the major parties, is as follows:


Party/group
Votes cast
%
Seats won
Plaid Cymru
30,000
39%
28
Labour
20,000
26%
23
“Official” Independents
20,000
26%
20
People First
2,226
3%
1
“Independent Independents”
2,230
3%
2
Conservative
1,675
2%
0
Liberal Democrat
675
1%
0

As we can see, there was hardly anything in it between Labour and Meryl's Independents in terms of votes cast (less than 500 votes in fact).

The two "true" Independents are John Jenkins (Elli ward in Llanelli) and Edward Thomas (Llandeilo), who appears to be unaffiliated.

In terms of the number of women councillors, the election saw a decline in numbers from 18 to 16.

In terms of age, Cneifiwr reckons that a staggering 64 years separate veteran Dai Trelech from Labour student Calum Higgins.

Despite the lack of women councillors, two of the women returned deserve special mention.

In Llanfihangel ar Arth, Plaid's Linda Evans polled more votes than any other individual candidate in the county as a whole, with 1,074 votes compared with a paltry 137 for Tory Douglas Spragg.

Not far away, Cneifiwr is proud to say that Hazel Evans in Cenarth ward notched up 7 votes for every vote cast for her Tory rival, the hyper-sensitive Henrietta Hensher, memorably described by a local resident as having "more ruffled feathers than a chicken in a wind tunnel".







3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Looking around the county it seems that it is splitting down between Llanelli & the former industrial area - Labour with Plaid and Independents representing the Agricultural /Country Towns . These areas are the ones who have had less spend on them by the Meryl Gravel / Madge Llanelli Coalition witness the grand schemes for Llanelli - arts centre, more leisure centres and the white elephant at Parc Strade {and that is a comment from a Scarlet Fan}

Anonymous said...

Mae agwedd sarhaus Cyngor Sir Gar tuag at y Gymraeg yn parhau. Ar ddiwrnod canlyniadau'r etholiadau yn ddiweddar, roedd troi at y wefan Gymraeg yn wastraff amser oherwydd doedd braidd dim canlyniadau'n cael eu rhoi arni. Yn y diwedd bu'n rhaid i mi droi at y wefan Saesneg, lle rodd holl ganlyniadau'r sir ar gael. Mae'n amlwg nad yw'r Gymraeg yn cyfrif yng ngolwg gweinyddwyr ein sir fach ni.

Anonymous said...

Not sure it as simple as your first contributor makes out. If you look at the results for former industrial council seats outside Llanelli they are as follows,

Plaid
Ammanford, Glanaman, Gorslas (1), Llannon(1), Pontyberem,Penygroes, Quaterbach, Saron(1), Llangyndeyrn Total 9

Independent
Trimsaran, Llandybie (1) & Glyn Total 3

Labour
Betws, Garnant,Gorslas(1),Llandybie(1), Llannon(1),Pontaman, Saron(1) & Tycroes
Total 8

I would not disagree with his/her final comment about investment.