The vote tally for TUSC candidates in last Thursday’s local council elections has now passed the 65,000 mark, with just two councils yet to publish their official results (in London and the West Midlands).
In 21 councils TUSC has polled over 1,000 votes. In ten of these, it has been over 2,000. A powerful anti-austerity message has been sent in all these areas.
In previous years we have presented a ‘league table’ of ward results (see the previous election results links on the Candidates page on the TUSC website, at https://www.tusc.org.uk/candidate ). But this year’s challenge has been of a different scale. There are 77 council wards, for example, where TUSC has polled over 5% of the vote.
And are wards the best comparators? There were 31 councils where TUSC stood in over 30% of the seats up for election this year. The mean average share of the vote in the wards contested in these authorities is probably a better measure of support.
In five of these councils TUSC’s average ward vote is over 5% – topped by Salford (9.9%), Haringey (6.9%), Barnsley (6.4%), Southampton (5.7%) and Newham (5.5%). These are closely followed by Enfield (4.8%), Doncaster (4.6%), Waltham Forest (4.5%), Hackney (4.5%), Stevenage (3.8%), Coventry (3.7%) and Wakefield (3.4%).
The TUSC national steering committee is meeting on Wednesday to discuss the results and plans for next year – the general election but also the 2015 local council elections, being fought in more seats (excluding London) than were contested this year. A full election report will be ready for the meeting. In the meantime, the regional results reports that are complete can be found below.