Election

Election

An election is a formal decision-making process by which a population chooses an individual to hold public office. Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative democracy operates since the 17th century. Elections may fill offices in the legislature, sometimes in the...

s for Cambridge

Cambridge

The city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about north of London. Cambridge is at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen – a play on Silicon Valley and the fens surrounding the...

 City Council

City council

A city council or town council is the legislative body that governs a city, town, municipality or local government area.-Australia & NZ:Because of the differences in legislation between the States, the exact definition of a City Council varies...

 were held on Thursday 4 May 2006. As Cambridge City Council is elected by thirds, one seat in each of the city's 14 wards was up for election. The exception was Romsey, where two seats were up for election as a by-election

By-election

A by-election is an election held to fill a political office that has become vacant between regularly scheduled elections....

 for the other seat was held on the same day. Therefore 15 of the 42 seats on the Council were up for election. Overall turnout

Voter turnout

Voter turnout is the percentage of eligible voters who cast a ballot in an election . After increasing for many decades, there has been a trend of decreasing voter turnout in most established democracies since the 1960s...

 was 34.4%, down from 37.0% in 2004. The lowest turnout (28.4%) was in Abbey ward and the highest (40.8%) in Queen Edith's.

Results

The composition of the Council after the election was:

• Liberal Democrats
  Liberal Democrats
  The Liberal Democrats are a social liberal political party in the United Kingdom which supports constitutional and electoral reform, progressive taxation, wealth taxation, human rights laws, cultural liberalism, banking reform and civil liberties .The party was formed in 1988 by a merger of the...
  
   - 29 (69.0%)
• Labour
  Labour Party (UK)
  The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...
  
   - 13 (31.0%)

Abbey

Arbury

Castle

Cherry Hinton

Coleridge

East Chesterton

King's Hedges

Market

Newnham

Petersfield

Queen Edith's

Romsey

Because both seats were up for election each voter had two votes (i.e. plurality-at-large bloc voting

Plurality-at-large voting

Plurality-at-large voting is a non-proportional voting system for electing several representatives from a single multimember electoral district using a series of check boxes and tallying votes similar to a plurality election...

). Party vote percentages are calculated as percent of the total number of votes; the number (not the percentage) of turnout has been estimated by halving the total number of votes.

Trumpington

West Chesterton

Sources

• Cambridge City Council: Local election results
• Cambridge City Council: 2006 local election full results
• Cambridge City Election Results since 1945

See also

• Cambridge local elections
  Cambridge local elections
  One third of Cambridge City Council is elected each year, followed by one year without election.-Political control:Labour 1973 - 1976Conservative 1976 - 1979No overall control 1979 - 1986Labour 1986 - 1987No overall control 1987 - 1988Labour 1988 - 1992...
  
  
• United Kingdom local elections, 2006
  United Kingdom local elections, 2006
  Local government elections took place in England on Thursday 4 May 2006. Polling stations were open between 7:00 and 22:00.All London borough council seats were up for election, as well as a third of the seats on each of the metropolitan borough councils, and a third of some unitary authorities...
  
  
• Elections in the United Kingdom
  Elections in the United Kingdom
  There are five types of elections in the United Kingdom: United Kingdom general elections, elections to devolved parliaments and assemblies, elections to the European Parliament, local elections and mayoral elections. Elections are held on Election Day, which is conventionally a Thursday...