Euro success
Given the national mood over MPs expenses which seemed to be encouraging many voters to give all of the three main parties a good kicking, I was relieved and heartened by the Lib Dem showing in the North East.
We held off the UKIP challenge to retain the third seat for Fiona hall, who has been an excellent and respected MEP over the past five years doing some leading EU-wide work on environmental and climate change issues as well as working hard for the North East.
The vote across County Durham was counted at the Abbey Sports Centre yesterday evening with the following result:
| Labour | 33,421 |
| Lib Dem | 20,300 |
| Cons | 19,017 |
| UKIP | 17,008 |
| BNP | 10,847 |
| Green | 6,578 |
| Others | 8,568 |
| Spoiled | 402 |
So the Lib Dems were confirmed as the leading opposition party across County Durham.
There was no separate count for the City constituency area as happened last time because of local government re-organisation, but at the voter verification on Thursday evening we estimate that we took around a third of the City vote about half as much again as the Labour vote. It was difficult to be very accurate as the votes were verified face down and so we had to rely on impressions of marks coming through the back of the ballot papers!
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