Election cockup

Well who'd have thunk?

Simon Hayes (Independent) won and is the first Police and Crime Commissioner for Hampshire. The votes were as follows:-

Candidate	1st Preference	2nd Preference	Total votes
Michael Mates	52,616	13,188	65,804
Simon Hayes	47,632	33,037	80,669
Jacqui Rayment	38,813
David Goodhall	27,197
Don Jerrard	24,443
Stephen West	21,185

The first problem is that 52,000 people who were just completely unable to control their urge to vote Conservative will not understand how their man didn't win. Some of them will blame the LibDems, some will blame UKIP or the EU, some will just bang on for years about how the idiot in charge got it all wrong.

Now let's consider some of the more interesting statistics:

Turnout: 15% On those rare occasions when elections are held for parish councils they usually manage 20%

A total of 5,595 ballots were rejected including:-

1,904 "Voting for more than one candidate as to the first preference vote"
1,900 "Unmarked as to the first preference vote"
1,733 "Void for Uncertainty"

You see? those who rejected AV last year on the grounds that it's too complicated for thick English voters knew what they were talking about.