Kate Hoey holds Vauxhall constituency

Unsurprisingly, Kate Hoey has won and held the Vauxhall constituency for Labour.  That is unsurprising.  Well Done, Kate.

But she's also already made a spiky proclamation (there's a surprise), with one source claiming that she announced at about 12:30 last night, "if the results are as they look tonight, Gordon will go very, very quickly."  I don't think Kate would be too upset by that result, as there's not a lot of love lost there.

What /is/ interesting is that according to the BBC, the Conservatives improved on their share of the vote in Vauxhall by 7% (with Labour, the Lib Dems and the Greens all losing some of the vote).  Does that reflect the changing demographic of the constituency?  Is it a result of the boundaries having changed?  Or, is it part of an un-South London-like Conservative swing? 

Repeating the story in the rest of the country, there was an upsurge in the number of people coming out to vote in Vauxhall.  Turnout was at 57.7% this year, up from 46.9% in 2005, but that doesn't sound particularly high to me.  By comparison, in 1992, 62.4% of the constituency turned out to vote.

Even despite our extensive and colourful list of candidates (somebody was supposedly present at the Vauxhall result, in a fox outfit), support for minorities was low.  After the extensive online Drinkall campaign, I'm surprised that the anti-capitalists won fewer seats than the Socialist Party of Great Britain.  The English Democrats (despite failing to appear at the hustings) came 5th, winning more votes than any other of the small minority parties.