Thursday, June 22, 2006

Could Labour have won Bowthorpe last May?

Funnily enough I have spoken to two key Labour members this week and the subject of my win has come up both times. With the prospect of a by-election in Mile Cross, Labour feel they could have been on 18 Councillors if it hadn't have been for "a slip" in Bowthorpe. I disagreed, I feel that Bowthorpe and Earlham voted for a candidate and a party likely to put them first rather than a party line.

Anyway, one Labour bod said that they knew throwing resources into Bowthorpe wouldn't have made the difference, but they might have lost their wafer thin 14 vote majority in Lakenham if they had have done. The second said that if Labour had played a Get-out-the-vote Games they could have still beaten me. I think not - I was there in May and Labour's vote simply wasn't coming out whilst the Conservatives had their tails up. No amount of GOTV would change that.

So why, said one, could they win back Lakenham and University but not hold Bowthorpe? Well, if they can't work that out, I'm not telling them.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Antony Folk didn't vote for you because you were Conservative. They gave you the majority vote because:
1) Antony Little is great person who people believe in, and comes across as a "can do" deliverer.
2) you backed the local Incinerator and Anti social issues such as grafitti, litter, vandalism, KwA on streetcorners, this resonated with people.
3)you continually got the issues through the door, city labour didn't.
4)The Labour councillors were complacent and neutral on key issues
5)Green candidates was poor and came across as a spoiler.
6)If you were a Green or Libdem (no offence meant), on personality you would have still won.