Animal Welfare Party

To all AWP members and supporters - a little more detail on Animal Welfare Party's results in the 2015 General Election: 

Professor Andrew Knight, AWP Candidate for Kensington 158 votes / 0.45%
Jon Homan, AWP Candidate for Hackney North & Stoke Newington 225 votes / 0.44%
Guy Dessoy, AWP Candidate for Putney 184 votes / 0.43%
Vanessa Hudson, AWP Candidate for Holborn & St. Pancras 173 votes / 0.32%
Total votes across 4 constituencies: 740 / average 0.41%

This is the second time that Animal Welfare Party (formerly known as Animals Count) has contested a UK General Election and our fifth election overall, since we were formed in 2006.

Although compared to the results of some of the other parties standing, yesterday's figures may seem low, here at AWP we are delighted with the results which show definite progress since we contested the previous General Election in 2010. In that election, our party had the funds to stand just one candidate, the wonderful orator, Richard Deboo, in the constituency of Islington South and Finsbury. In that election the results were:

Richard Deboo Animals Count Candidate for Islington South & Finsbury 149 votes / 0.3%

The fact that, thanks to you, we were able to raise the deposits to stand four candidates in this election and to print 289,000 leaflets - one each for every single home in each of the four constituencies is huge progress for our party in and of itself. As you are no doubt aware, other than the donations we receive from members and supporters like you who believe in our aims, our party receives no other funding. The fact that you answered our call to raise funds to be able to stand more than one candidate in this election is fantastic - the fact that we were able to stand not just two candidates, as we had been hoping for, or three, but, in the end, a total of four is an amazing result and one that we cannot thank you enough for.

As for our overall result, yesterday demonstrates a clear increase from 0.3% of the vote in 2010 to an average of 0.4% of the vote in 2015.

Of course we would have liked this figure to have been higher but our core team were well prepared for a figure of around this amount knowing, as we do, that with the 'First Past the Post' system used in the UK General Election, it is extremely difficult for small parties like ours to make political headway. Added to that was the particular nature of this election, where it looked for the past few weeks that no party would have a clear majority and many voters, once again, felt the need to vote tactically rather than for the party they may have wanted to. We continue to believe that our best opportunities for electoral success lie in elections that use a system of Proportional Representation, such as the EU Parliament elections. In the last EU Parliament election (2014) we received 0.96% of the vote - not so far behind the 1.2% of the vote won by our German counterparts, Tierschutz Partei, which won them one seat in the EU Parliament.

Votes aside, we are also delighted that awareness of our party has risen substantially over the past year. Out canvassing, many more people are now aware of who we are than were previously and, as you may have seen, we have received hundreds of messages from people across the UK, asking if they could vote AWP where they live or expressing their desire to Vote AWP, if only there had been an AWP candidate in their constituency.

That raised awareness is directly down to you - our members and supporters - and the calls you have answered from us to donate funds and attend fundraising events, to share emails and social media content, to change your social media profile pictures to one of ours, to leaflet in the streets on our behalf and to take part in PR activities like our recent battle bus tour of London. We cannot thank you enough for the kindness and belief in our aims that you have shown. On behalf of all our candidates, a huge thank you, not just to everyone who voted for us in this election, but also to the hundreds more people behind the scenes who helped us win those votes.

Yesterday's result shows us, of course, that we still have work to do but one thing is clear, we have helped raise animal welfare issues on the political agenda and will continue to work to do so. 

Onwards for animals!

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Commentaar

Zover ik kan zien hebben nieuwe partijen in het Britse kiesstelsel vrijwel geen kans. 

UKIP?