Thanet South and the Local Elections

I guess you've seen something doing the rounds - Nigel Farage, the former ex-leader of the UK Independence Party, failed to win Thanet South, yet UKIP won control of Thanet District Council.

And there is this "proof" from the man made that complaint to the police that the result was rigged - when they have real crimes to solve:

A few things to note:

• That shows 149,034 people voting - 156% of the electorate. Before anyone thinks that is odd, in local elections with multi-member wards, the number of votes cast is much higher than the turnout as people cast more than one vote.
• Hence UKIP vote (and other parties' votes) are going to be higher at local elections (with more votes cast) than at a general election - there is nothing at all suspicious about this for people with a basic grasp of maths
• People vote different ways at local and general elections - otherwise, the Liberal Democrats in New Forest East would be tweeting #newforestrigged every election
• The Thanet constituencies contain more than Thanet - as the official description under the Parliamentary Constituencies (England) Order 2007 shows

So, what was the local election result in Thanet South? It takes 14 wards (Beacon Road, Bradstowe, Central Harbour, Cliffsend & Pegwell, Cliftonville East, Cliftonville West, Eastcliffe, Kingsgate, Nethercourt, Newington, Northwood, Sir Moses Montefiore, St Peters and Viking) from the District of Thanet, as well as 2 wards (Little Stour & Ashton and Sandwich) from the District of Dover.

As most of these are multi-member, we work out each party's vote by taking the candidate from that party with the highest vote in that ward.

So, the local election result for Thanet South is:

• Conservative - 16,811
• UK Independence Party - 14,980
• Labour - 12,487
• Green - 1,652
• Liberal Democrat - 1,385
• We Are The Reality Party - 793
• Independent (Ralph Hoult) - 513
• Independent (Ruth Bailey) - 230
• Independent (Dean McCastree) - 201
• Ramsgate First - 199
• Independent (Peter Cook) - 168
• Independent (Bayo Oyediran) - 104

So, no mystery here. The Conservatives topped the poll at both the local and general elections.

One interesting thing to note is that - in complete reverse to the conspiracy theory - Farage actually won more votes than UKIP's local election votes in the constituency.