Sunday 8 May 2011

Ieuan Wyn Jones AM and his core vote.

Paul Williams (aka The Druid) came a respectable second, with 7032 votes, in last weeks Welsh Assembly Elections; he nearly matched the number of votes received by Peter Rogers (7197) when standing as the official Conservative candidate in 2003. And it was similar to the number of votes Albert Owen received (7181) when he stood as the Labour candidate in 1999.

Ieuan Wyn Jones vote was down slightly, 9969 as compared to 10653 in 2007.

By the end of his next term in the Welsh Assembly in 2016; 5 years this time instead of the usual 4 to avoid conflict with the General Election the year before, Ieuan Wyn Jones will have been representing Anglesey as an MP or AM for 29 years, overtaking Cledwyn Hughes who represented the island for 28 distinguished years.

Elections where IWJ has been a candidate on Anglesey

The only person to have defeated Ieuan Wyn Jones was the Conservative Keith Best back in 1983, when Ieuan Wyn Jones first stood. The nearest anybody has come to defeating him since was in 1992 when his majority was cut to 1106 by Gwynn Price Roberts standing for the Conservatives.

In essence Paul Williams did very well considering Ieuan Wyn Jones has a core vote of around 9000 plus, the current unpopularity of austerity cuts by the Conservative led Coalition Government, and the island history long support of ‘liberal’ parties. In fact other than for Keith Best (1979-1987) you have to go back to 1722-1725 to find the previous ‘Tory’ to have held the seat - The Viscount Bulkeley.

Finally I think it’s worth mentioning the good result achieved by Joe Lock, the Labour candidate, who increased their vote to 6307. The least said about the Liberal Democrats the better.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sorry, but with respect to the Conservative vote I think you are talking rubbish.

In 2007 Rogers and Roach (conservative) combined achieved 9741 votes on a turnout of 26,820.

In 2011 Williams (conservative, and including the Rogers vote) only managed 7,032 votes, albeit on a reduced turnout of 24,067.

Quite a significant decline.

An Eye On... said...

Anon you assume that Rogers vote was all tory which in fact it wasn't and studying the figures during his brief sortoies shows that.

It consisted of disaffected tories, floating Plaid voters, and people who wanted to vote but not for mainstream (or mainland) parties.