City Elections – May 2018 results in OX3

TonyOX3

Here are the results of the elections to the Wards in OX3 in the City Council elections held on 3 May 2018. Click the tables to see them in full size. Overall there was little change apart from the LibDem’s Roz Smith winning Quarry & Risinghurst from Labour’s Dee Sinclair.

The full results for the City are on the City Council’s website.

No UKIP this year; their 2016 vote seems to have gone mostly, and unsurprisingly, to the Conservatives, allowing Tim Patmore to squeeze perennial Independent candidate Chaka Artwell into third place.

Echoing results elsewhere in the City the Conservatives and LibDems made small gains in their share of the vote at the expense of the Greens, but the result in this Labour stronghold was never in doubt.

Talking of strongholds, no surprise that Altaf-Khan was re-elected for the LibDems. Both he and Labour’s Simon Ottino increased their share of the vote slightly at the expense of the paper candidates standing for the Conservatives and Greens.

Joe McManners returns to the Council in this safe Labour seat after standing down from Churchill Ward in 2013. In a significant swing the Conservative share of the vote dropped from 30.1% in 2016 to only 18.5% this year, pushing them down to third place. The LibDems were the gainers, up from 10.7% in 2016 to 21.8% and second place this time round.

The 2016 election in Marston was a curious one, with two Independents standing and one of them (Mick Haines) sweeping the board with close to 50% of the vote to push Labour into second place with 35%. In this year’s more conventional roster Mary Clarkson was re-elected for Labour with a very similar share of the vote to when she last stood in 2014.

We are used to Quarry & Risinghurst being the closest run of the local wards. A 6% swing to the LibDems was just enough to see Roz Smith elected and Dee Sinclair (Lab) ousted. Whether the increased LibDem vote here and in Headington Hill & Northway was anything to do with Brexit is anyone’s guess. We’d need to know why it affected these two wards and apparently not the others.