UK elections, 2004

Many elections in the United Kingdom took place on "Super Thursday", June 10, 2004.

• London mayoral election, 2004 - won by Ken Livingstone
• London Assembly Election, 2004
• the UK part of the European Parliament Election 2004
• local elections in many parts of England and Wales. In many districts ward boundaries were redrawn and so the entire council is being re-elected. This is happened in all the metropolitan boroughs and all the counties and county boroughs of Wales.

The UK government used this opportunity to trial a number of alternative voting methods. The largest scale of these trials will be the use of all-postal voting in four regions: North East, North West, East Midlands, and Yorkshire and the Humber. Where alternative voting methods were trialled, this applied to both local and European elections. The government faced heavy criticism from opposition parties due the decision to over-rule the Electoral Commission's recommendation for no more than three regions to be trialled. Many ballot papers were sent out wrongly, and generally were received quite late. In the end, though, no major disasters happened.

Results

The Labour Party polled poorly in the local elections, and was beaten into third place, in terms of share of the vote, after the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats.

Of the minor parties, Plaid Cymru and the Green Party increased their number of councillors, whilst the United Kingdom Independence Party have picked up a handful. The British National Party failed to make predicted gains in Burnley, and lost a seat in Blackburn with Darwen, but took three seats in Epping Forest and four in Bradford.

The UKIP made a much stronger showing in the European Parliament elections, where it increased its number of MEPs from 3 to 12.

See UK local elections, 2004 for the full council results.

External link

• Vote 2004: BBC coverage of the elections (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/uk_politics/2004/vote_2004/)
• Guardian (newspaper): collection of manifestos (http://politics.guardian.co.uk/elections2004/page/0,14549,1214350,00.html)
• The Guardian Guide to Elections 2004 (http://politics.guardian.co.uk/elections2004/0,14549,1211033,00.html#europe)