To try and gauge where we are following the elections, I did some comparisons of votes cast in the county elections compared to the district elections last year. Pointless doing a straight comparison with 2005 since there was a general election and things have changed so much since then.

The spreadsheet below is calculated by taking the share of the vote in 2009 and subtracting the share of the vote in 2008. Where there wasn’t an election in 2008 I went back to 2007 or 2006 (in the case of Hesketh with Becconsall, I took the last election that was contested).

The obvious highlights are:

• Labour increased the share of the vote in West Lancs North and Ormskirk West – I think that bucks the national trend.
• UKIP did incredibly well. Although they didn’t win any seats, they increased their share of the vote across the borough.
• The Conservative vote dropped significantly across the borough, but they still won seats because they were so far ahead in all areas last year.

I’ll take a look at the stats over the past five years and will post something later, to put things into perspective.