Is this it?

Well it is just over 12 hours until the polls open and campaigning is drawing to a close. I have had another Labour party leaflet through today, the only one from any party this week.

Searching for a word to sum up the 2010 election campaign in York Central I have landed upon lackluster, or perhaps unenthusiastic.

Over the last four or so weeks I have received a few leaflets from the main parties (chart below) but no canvassers, no one knocking on my door, no-one phoning, emailing or stopping me in town. On my street there are perhaps 2 leaflets stuck up in windows.
Obviously a lot of attention locally has been diverted into the much more marginal York Outer constituency. Even accepting that it does not feel as though the main candidates, especially those trying to unseat Hugh Bayley, have really put in much of an effort to win my vote.

Candidate Contacts Chart

I have created the chart above (and in the right hand navigation) to show the number of contacts that I personally receive from each of the York Central Candidates.

As contacts I am counting leaflets, letters, emails, phone calls, knocking on my door or accosting me in the street. I will not be counting any attempts at contact though this blog though. What I am interested in is the amount of contact that an ordinary voter in York Central gets from each candidate.

I am using the beginning of this week as the starting point. So far I have had 1 leaflet each from the Liberal Democrats, Greens and Labour. I will update the chart periodically through the next few weeks up to election day.

4 weeks to go

We now have 4 weeks until the election on May 6th. The confirmed candidates for the York Central Constituency are

Hugh Bayley MP (Labour)
Susan Wade-Weeks (Conservative)
Christian Vassie (Liberal Democrats)
Andy Chase (Green)
Paul Abbott (UKIP)
Eddy Vee (Monster Raving Loony)
Jeff Kelly (BNP)


There has been a boundary change since the last election. The results from 2005 were

Labour 46.9%
Conservative 24.4%
Liberal Democrat 21.8%
Green Party 4.5%
UKIP 1.8%

The BNP and the Monster Raving Loony's did not put up candidates for the seat in 2005. There were 3 other candidates in that election but none of them got more than 0.5% of the vote.

The BBC have done a projection of what the 2005 vote would have looked like with the new boundaries. This gives

Labour 48.8%
Conservative 22.9%
Liberal Democrat 20.1%
Other 8.2%

Which ever set of results you look at the Conservatives and the Lib Dems are going to have to do something fairly dramatic to unseat Hugh Bayley who has, after all, been MP for York for 18 years.