Friday, June 13, 2008

Congratulations, Cllr Mark Mills

Oxford has a new councillor, and he's a LibDem. Yesterday saw a by-election in Holywell Ward, in the city centre, were 95% of the electorate are students. The university colleges will be represented by one of their own, as student Mark Mills has been elected, to represent the ward alongside fellow LD, Nathan Pyle, who was elected in May. The by-election followed the resignation of the ward's excellent councillor, Richard Huzzey, who is moving to the States for work (and, incidentally, just ahead of the presidential election).

In recent years, Holywell has been a fight between Greens and the LibDems. This year, in May, it was the Tory party who came a poor second -- how student voting habits change. The Conservatives repeated that this time, with what they must have thought was a stronger candidate, a former councillor who lost his seat in neighbouring Carfax just over a month ago.

The result in full:
Mark Mills 188 (40%)
Tory 112 (24%)
Lab 93 (20%)
Green 72 (15%)

Turnout, on the penultimate day of university term, was low at just under 12%.

2 comments:

a radical writes said...

Wow, only 12%, I hate to say it, but if thats the turnout then the oxford lib dem soc needs to be doing a better job. still well done to Mark!

Liberal Neil said...

Not a bad turnout for the penultimate day of term!