Hugo Swire comes out of 2015 election less popular than going into it!

The dust is settling on the elections held last Thursday and this now allows some introspection of what happened locally.

In the parliamentary election we know that the Conservative candidate for East Devon, Hugo Swire was re-elected. In this election Hugo Swire was challenged by Claire Wright (Independent) and Steve Race (Labour), Stuart Mole (Liberal Democrat) and Andrew Chapman (UKIP).

At the same time we know that nationally the Conservative Party was elected to govern on its own, with its previous coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats taking a real hammering, to the point of verging on being wiped out. We know that the Labour Party was all but wiped out in Scotland where the Scottish Nationalists were all conquering. UKIP, managed to produce a reasonable showing as an overall percentage of votes cast in the election, but failed to make the breakthrough in turns of parliamentary seats that it had both predicted and expected.

Zorro was intrigued to understand what lay behind the East Devon parliamentary voting figures. This was particularly as in his acceptance speech Hugo Swire said “I am deeply honoured to have had an increase in (my) vote; my majority is at its largest since I was first elected back in 2001”.

Zorro has pulled together the election results for East Devon for the past four elections since Hugo Swire was first elected, covering 2001, 2005, 2010 and 2015. This has then been compared election upon election and for the 2015 election the local voting per candidate has been compared with how their parties (where this is applicable) fared this time.

East Devon General Elections 2001/2015 – votes per political party

	2001	2005	2010	2015
Conservative	22,681	23,075	25,662	25,401
Liberal Democrat	14,486	15,139	16,548	3,715
Labour	7,974	7,598	5,721	5,591
UKIP	2,696	3,035	4,346	6,870
Green	n/a	n/a	815	n/a
Independent	n/a	400	n/a	13,140
Total voting	69,542	49,247	53,517	54,717

East Devon General Elections 2001/2015 – percentage of total votes per political party

	2001	2005	2010	2015
Conservative	47.4%	46.9%	48.3%	46.4%
Liberal Democrat	30.3%	30.7%	31.2%	6.8%
Labour	16.7%	15.4%	10.8%	10.2%
UKIP	5.6%	6.2%	8.2%	12.6%
Green	n/a	n/a	1.5%	n/a
Independent	n/a	0.8%	n/a	24.0%

What this information tells us is that Hugo Swire got it wrong in his acceptance speech on the morning of 8 May. In this election he polled less votes than in the last one, therefore he is less popular coming out of the election than going into it. Indeed, Hugo Swire’s percentage of the votes cast is in 2015 at the lowest percentage (46.4%) than in any previous election.

Hugo Swire’s lack of popularity is interesting when one recognises that this election we saw the Conservative Party nationally increase its share of the vote by 0.8%. So Hugo Swire did worse locally than his party did nationally. That tells a story in itself.

Hugo Swire’s loss of popularity has to be compared with the fact that the Independent candidate (Claire Wright) polled remarkably well at 24% of the votes, and that the Labour Party, in a constituency that is well away from its traditional heartlands, also did well to more or less maintain its previous share of the vote. The big losers in East Devon, as with elsewhere, were the Liberal Democrats whose voting share plummeted to just under 7% of the vote; a long way from its heyday when it received just under a third of the votes.

East Devon General Elections 2010/2015 – change in vote share

	2010 East Devon	2010/2015 % Change East Devon	2015 National	2010/2015 % Change National
Conservative	46.4%	-  1.9%	36.9%	+  0.8%
Liberal Democrat	6.8%	- 24.4%	7.9%	- 15.2%
Labour	10.2%	-  0.6%	30.4%	+ 1.5%
UKIP	12.6%	+ 4.4%	12.6%	+ 9.5%
Green	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a
Independent	24.0%	n/a	n/a	n/a
Turnout	73.7%	-	66.1%	-

In comparing the voting in East Devon against the national turnout for the political parties this shows that Hugo Swire dropped his vote by almost 2% at a time when his party nationally increased its share of the vote by just under 1%.This shows that there is some unpopularity with the Conservatives in East Devon at a time when the Conservative Party nationally is riding high.

Equally, the Labour Party in East Devon produced a percentage increase in its vote, therefore outperforming its position nationally. This was probably due to the local dissatisfaction with the Conservative Party, but more importantly, the local and national flight away from the Liberal Democrats.

At the same time UKIP’s vote in East Devon was unable to increase at the same rate as its national party did. This suggests to Zorro that its local candidate’s under performance reflected his lacklustre and poor campaign. East Devon should have been a prime constituency for UKIP to do well in, particularly when the local Conservative Party was performing so badly in the way it was running the District Council.

But, the candidate who really has most to cheer about as a result of this election is the Independent candidate, Claire Wright. Against a national backdrop of an overall improved outcome for the Conservative Party, she came from nowhere and stormed in to take a quarter of the vote. This is particularly impressive when one considers that she had no political party apparatus or funding behind her, and the past four elections have not had a consistent independent challenge. Over the three previous elections a total of 400 votes had been garnered for an Independent candidate.

Zorro remains of the view that a collaborative coalition that works hard over the next five years could mount a credible challenge to the Conservative Party which does not command the support of 50% or more of the voters, let alone electors in East Devon. Indeed, if you tally up the votes for the progressive candidates – Independent, Labour and Liberal Democrats – Hugo Swire barely scrapes through with a majority. There is a real lesson to be learnt here!

It’s still time for challenge!