Carl Sargeant eases to victory in Welsh Assembly election

Carl Sargeant cruised to victory in the early hours of this morning with another landslide win in the Welsh Assembly elections.

Carl took 47% of the vote with a 5,364 majority, the local politician wins his fourth straight term at the Assembly following a “hard fought campaign”

Talking to those who voted yesterday around Deeside many see Carl as a trusted and crucial voice in that far off land of Cardiff fighting not only for the Alyn and Deeside constituency but for those causes he is passionate about, raising awareness of domestic abuse and the White Ribbon Campaign and of course the plight of Shotton’s steelworkers are all close to Carl’s heart.

Mr Sergeant said:

“Its a huge honour and privilege to represent people of Alyn and Deeside.

As a local man rooted in my community I’ve been proud to represent the people of Alyn and Deeside since 2003.

As a party we’ve fought a good campaign and we’ve listened to what people are telling us on the doorsteps.

We reflect their priorities which are boosting jobs and growth, taking care of the health service, and standing up for our steelworkers.

I’d like to thank the people of Alyn and Deeside for putting their trust in me and in Welsh Labour. You can be sure I will continue to work hard for the people of Alyn and Deeside.”

Conservative

Second-placed Mike Gibbs the Conservative candidate won 4,558 votes a share of 21%, Gibbs fought a bit of an odd campaign, splitting his time admirably between his job as an NHS clinician in the West Midlands and, going off his Facebook posts, spending much of his time in the constituency focusing on Buckley.

Both Conservative and Labour dropped their share by 7% respectively largely due to UKIP who weren’t represented in 2011.

UKIP.

Michelle Brown the UKIP candidate took 3,765 votes, just 793 short of coming second in the constituency with sizable 17% of the vote, a similar share to last year’s General Election.

The UKIP contingent were expecting to win two seats in the regional vote, Nigel Williams UKIP Delyn candidate told Deeside.com he was confident they would take two of the four north Wales regional seats, it was later confirmed UKIP’s Nathan Gill and Michelle Brown had both won, they will be joined by Llyr Gruffydd for Plaid Cymru and Mark Isherwood for the Conservatives.

UKIP will get a voice a the Welsh Assembly and crucially funding Mr Williams said and praised the proportional representation voting system saying it was a much fairer reflection of the hard work the UKIP teams have put in .

Passions were running high between a couple of female UKIP and Labour supporters as the night dragged on, so much so a ‘spat’ broke out between two from opposing sides.

A shouting match lasted for a couple of minutes and it left one of ladies claiming she was grabbed by the other, the returning officer had to intervene and in raised commanding voice told the two women to pack it in.

Plaid Cymru.

Jaqueline Hurst was delighted with the Plaid Cymru showing increasing the vote in Alyn & Deeside by 1.5% she secured 1,944 votes.

Liberal Democrats.

Peter Williams secured 980 votes for the Lib Dems nearly half of the 1725 they polled in 2011

Green Party

Candidate Martin Bennewith who won 527 votes amusingly raised a few BBC journalists eyebrows and a little chuckle from other quarters in the press area, when he slammed the BBC for largely ignoring the Greens existence during the run up to the Assembly election, to be fair he may have a valid point.

Turnout.

Worryingly turnout in the constituency appears to be going backwards down from 37% in 2011 to 34.8% in 2016 that’s despite a rise in turnout in Wales as a whole.

Across the 40 Wales constituencies 1,019,382 voted on Thursday – 45.39%, up 3.93% from the last election, 21,696 turnout yesterday in Alyn and Deeside versus 22,796 in 2011 despite arguably, a much larger campaign by Assembly particularly a massive and well orchestrated push on social media.

So for us in Deeside it’s “as you were” with the unshakable Labour axis of MP, Local Authority and Assembly member now back place back safely. – carry on!