More Votes Counted Than People Who Turned Out in Cambridge

Screenshot of the West Chesterton 2009 Results from the County Council Website

Cambridgeshire County Council’s election results are currently being published. I had received an assurance that the number of spoilt papers would be published alongside the ward by ward results. The council are not doing this, but they are reporting turnout figures on a per-ward basis from which I ought be able to approximate the number of spoilt papers.

I have been attempting to subtract the total number of votes from the turnout in an attempt to calculate the number of spoilt papers (along with those who didn’t post their paper in the ballot box).

However according to the figures published so far it appears there have been more votes allocated to individual candidates than there were people who turned out to vote in a number of Cambridge City wards.

For example the West Chesterton results show:

Wilkins, Kevin – Liberal Democrat 1157
Morley, Michael J – Conservative 522
Collis, Alexandra L J – Green 459
Sargeant, Michael G – Labour 394
  • Total Votes 2532
  • Turnout 2302
  • Turnout minus total votes counted for the candidates, which I was expecting to reveal the number of spoilt papers, gives me the nonsensical -230

At the very least I’ve not been able to extract the figure for spoilt papers / those who decided to do something else with their paper other than post it in the ballot box. I am wondering what is going on.

Postal votes ought be included in the turnout figures. Have they been?

Ward Total Votes Turnout Excess of Votes over Turnout
West Chesterton 2302 2532 230
Romsey 2330 2410 80
East Chesterton 2190 2256 66
Petersfield 2364 2415 51
Coleridge 2514 2557 43
Queen Edith’s 2667 2700 33
Newnham 2237 2270 33
Arbury 2712 2729 17
Market 1877 1893 16
King’s Hedges 1905 1918 13

Any explanations in the comments please!


8 responses to “More Votes Counted Than People Who Turned Out in Cambridge”

  1. Hmmm, I also thought they were going to issue the number of spoiled ballot papers. This is a bit scary.

  2. There were not that many spolit papers. In Trumpington there were 25 papers not included in the main count, of which ~3 came back after the agent checks, so we are looking at ~20 spolit papers from ~2200 votes.

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