Mark Pack

Yup, you read that headline right. For those are the surprising figures from the 2009 European Election expense returns which have just been published: Labour spending up by 35%, Conservative spending cut by 21%. »

“Nearly three-quarters (74%) of people aged 65 or over said that they had voted in the European Parliamentary elections, compared with only 13% of those aged 18 to 24.” (From the Electoral Commission’s report in to the June 2009 elections, p.26.)  »

In June’s European elections, turnout amongst postal voters was 64% in Great Britain. Turnout amongst non-postal voters was 30% – a full 34 percentage points lower. There’s a lesson in there about campaigning… The figures for the different regions were: South East 68% (+34%) South West 68% (+33%) East Midlands 67% (+34%) Eastern 67% (+33%) West Midlands 66% (+35%) Scotland 63% (+39%) Yorkshire [...] »

Cross-posted from The Wardman Wire: Over the last few years a wide range of attempts have been made to raise turnout at elections in the UK. The broad conclusion is very simple: all-postal ballots raise turnout significantly (albeit at the cost of various drawbacks) and nothing else that has been tried does so. E-voting, early voting, [...] »

No, I didn’t either. But the odd thing is, there’s plenty of evidence that the public were keener to vote in European electins than previously. The evidence is certainly patchy and incomplete, but the uniformity of the turnout gloom and doom stories seems to me to say rather more about the media’s fixed image (’turnout? [...] »

Can you spot the person and party in this local newspaper report who: (a) Slipped back to fourth place for the first time (b) Saw their vote fall (c) But say they are “pleased” with the result? and hope to “ride the momentum” into next year’s local elections [Updated: as highlighted by a comment below, the newspaper's use [...] »

The Voice has covered the succession of positive reasons to vote for the Liberal Democrats given in recent days by The Observer, Polly Toynbee, The Guardian and The Independent, so it seems only fitting to top that list today with a reminder of the party’s own choice of words (from europe.libdems.org.uk): The European Parliament election is [...] »

Less surprising than the news from The Observer and The Guardian this week, but nonetheless a welcome leader today: Only the Liberal Democrats have consistently put the case for Europe, doing so even when seeking to hold seats in parts of the country, such as the south-west of England, that are more euro-sceptic than others. Like his [...] »

Things are indeed achanging in the Guardian Media Group. Sunday say The Observer unequivocally urge its readers to vote Liberal Democrat for the first time. And now Polly Toynbee is urging a vote for the Liberal Democrats in the European elections and in many local elections too: Throw out bad councils, and vote for Lib Dems [...] »

Window posters have a key role to play in many winning Liberal Democrat election campaigns because the more likely people think we are to win, the most likely they are to vote for us. Seeing lots of their neighbours displaying posters helps raise that credibility. The online equivalent is to change your Facebook profile photo, Twitter [...] »