Ukip could be contesting 70 percent of the council seats up for election on May 2
Back in 2009 the Ukip proportion was about one in five
Over the next couple of days we should see the full nomination list for the council seats that are due to be contested on May 2nd and the big focus is on how many candidates Ukip will manage to field.
For given what’s been happening in recent council by-elections the presence of Ukip on the ballot forms can have a big impact on outcomes.
Given that the Tories are defending twice as many seats as Labour and the LDs combined this could be more problematical for the blues than the other parties.
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Back in 2009 the party managed to put up candidates in just over 21% of the seats up. Estimates based on nominations published so far suggest that they’ll at least triple that.
One tally I’ve seen based on more than 700 seats is that Farage’s party will have someone standing in about 70%.
Interestingly there’s been a huge decline in BNP candidates which is down from 24% in 2009 to barely 3% of the seats looked at for next month.
Councils included in this calculation are Cambridgeshire, Dorset, Essex (incomplete), Isle of Wight UA, Leicestershire, North Yorkshire, Northumberland UA, Oxfordshire, Shropshire UA, Staffordshire (incomplete), Suffolk and Surrey.
No doubt we’ll see more data come out during the day.
Mike Smithson
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