Election Results
I see that Carlisle, 30 miles south of here, has a new Conservative MP after being with Labour forever... But Dumfries has stuck with the incumbents this election two days ago.... Russell Brown, Labour, for my district of Dumfries and Galloway, and David Mundell, Conservative, for the one just to the east of here.
I find it quite boring when the incumbents get elected back in. Scotland as a whole didn't change ANY party seat numbers (altho there were some new candidates who won in some places)... Scotland still only has one Conservative MP, 41 Labour MP's, six SNP seats, and eleven Lib Dem seats.... no change whatsoever from the 2005 result... which is boring and astounding at the same time. It bucks the trend of what the rest of the UK did... Down in England, the Tories gained lots of seats, Labour lost lots and the Liberals lost a few, which has all resulted in a hung parliament.
So the people down in England must think the people up here in Scotland are crazy... with all the Labour candidates we voted for. I really thought that there'd be more of a swap, even in Scotland, for Conservatives... and the Lib Dems did surprisingly poorly too, given what the polls were saying after the Nick Clegg-mania of the past several weeks.
I think the people in Scotland and other places like the Newcastle area in northeast England just couldn't see themselves voting Tory because they all remember the Thatcher years... and they chickened out from voting for other parties such as the Lib Dems for fear that it would help the Tories get in... so they reverted back to Labour.
Personally, I thought Labour needed a good whipping as punishment for the past several years of Iraq War lies, MP expenses and financial mess... so I voted for the SNP.
Here were the results in Dumfries and Galloway:
Russell Brown Labour23,95045.9+4.8Peter Duncan Conservative16,50131.6-3.7Andrew Wood Scottish National Party6,41912.3+0.2Richard Brodie Liberal Democrat4,6088.8+0.5William Wright UK Independence Party6951.3+1.3
so my guy came in a distant third... harumph.
In Scotland, the popular vote totals went like this:
LAB 42.0%
SNP 19.9%
LD 18.9%
CON 16.7%
While in the whole of the UK, the totals were:
CON 36.1%
LAB 29.0%
LD 23.0%
OTHERS 11.9%
And I was happy to see that a Green candidate has won down in Brighton. I would've voted for the Greens if they had run here.