THE POPULAR FRONT FOR THE LIBERATION OF CPSA
FIGHTING ON IN OUR 45th YEAR BUT A BIT RETIRED NOW
FREEDOM! UNITY! SOCIALISM!
ONE CIVIL SERVICE UNION,
ONE GLORIOUS DESTINY!
REVOLUTION UNTIL VICTORY!
NEC ELECTION STATS 2006
by Agent Kagoule
You'll have to be patient until Monday for all the juicy stories, maybe later depending on internet connections at Brighton (we've had trouble in the past). Those at Brighton will receive their paper communiques subject to contributing to our huge Conference week printing costs. Coff up, or we'll send Willie Samuels GEC & Bar round to practice his speeches on you. We know which hotels you're all staying at. (Barrabas)
Where are the other 32,000 members? PCS claims 320,000 members, but only 298,000 ballot papers issued. Do we really not have addresses for 10% of our membership?
Click for the Excel spreadsheet analysis. If you haven't got Excel, try "Open Office". Mind you, anyone seriously interested in number crunching should at least know someone with a copy of Excel.
if you accept that Currie got all the votes he was going to get (i.e. all his Moderate voters voted for him, plus a few yet-to-be-totally-convinced 4TM) then, if the other three Mods had not stood, their votes would probably have gone to 4TM. If you assume all their votes would have gone to 4TM then almost every permutation gives 4TM 3 VPs. In fact Moira CAMPBELL would probably have been Deputy President.
GLENYS must have received some 4TM voters' fourth vote for her share of the vote to actually increase when all her comrades' dropped.
MOIRA must have a significant personal vote. She added 13.5% to John McGOWAN's vote last time out and came within 1500 votes of LU's lowest placed DWP NEC candidate.
The performance of HMRC people in the General constituency shows that turnout in HMRC was again higher than elsewhere. I suspect that 4TM won the HMRC vote but lost outside of there. LU candidates don't do well in IR/HMRC national elections, but they do well enough to achieve higher votes than their colleagues when added to the General pool. And that's simply because of turnout. This is best illustrated by Andy REID. ANDY has never been anywhere near being elected in an HMRC-only election, this time out he adds over 14.5% to his share of the vote.
Similarly the DWP candidates got much lower votes, pointing to an even lower turnout amongst DWP voters. Logically, DWP and HMRC candidates should be always at the top of the poll given how much of the membership they make and levels of organisation. Yet 4 of the top ten are from small groups/branches. That means the power of the slate reaches far beyond the big battalions.
John McINALLY has been everywhere this year doing meetings and spouting off, so his poor showing must be of concern (down 9.9%). Indeed the worst performers on the LU slate were mainly from DWP: Mary FERGUSON (down 9.3%), Ian ALBERT (down 10.4%), Martin JOHN (down 9.8%), Rob WILLIAMS (down 10.2%). Only Marion LLOYD did as badly (down 10.3%).
The "swingometer" doesn't really mean much in terms of HMRC candidates, other than moving to the General constituency adds much more to LU candidates (average about 10%) than to PCSD candidates (average about 4%). There is no trend with 4TM - Jake WILDE's share went down but he can hardly complain, Gwenda BINKS did better, Les PRIESTLEY did (much) worse, others stayed about the same.
Other little bits and pieces of interest are that the new NEC has a Deputy President that is (now) against the Pensions Deal, though interestingly couldn't find the space to mention this in her election statement (cluck, cluck), a new member of the SWP (REID) to replace the one they lost (JOHN), of the Top Ten pollers only two are from SP/SSP, accusations of PCS being a family business have new meaning with the potential for there to be 3 couples in the Boardroom (GODRICH/WILLIAMSON, MORRIS/LEWTAS and/or KELLY - take your pick, BROWN/GEDLING). All that's needed is for there to be an Editorial Board for CLEMENTS/CAWKWELL to add to the sense of familioso. (Both the HODGKINSONS are up for Distinguished Life Membership - Barrabas)
Elsewhere, Andrea MARSH obviously benefited from John WARD's fit of pique when he put her name into the MODERATI list. ANDREA was outraged and understandably so. She's often wrongly accused of being "still a Moderate" but I don't think I know anyone who is ruder about STUART and "what went on".
James ASHTON, standing first time for NEC and HMRC GEC this year did extraordinarily well, miles ahead of CURRIE and with about 50% more votes than Doreen McNEIL. A look at where other "younger" candidates placed shows that there is an age factor, as well as gender. DOREEN could only add 3500 votes to her tally out of a potential 25,000. If voters do cherry pick, then that is a poor showing. Her "swing" (down 14.5%) was the worst of anyone.