Thank you!

Well, I had intended to write regular posts in the run-up to the elections, urging readers to vote Green and telling everyone how great Jean Lambert MEP is, but events somewhat overtook me as we entered the final stages of the campaign, and I was kept pretty busy with a steady stream of volunteers coming and helping to leaflet and campaign for us.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, we did really well both across London and in Lewisham - our vote share (and number of votes) went up and Jean Lambert was re-elected as Green MEP for London.

Thank you to everyone who supported us, whether by voting Green, displaying a poster, helping to deliver leaflets to your street or simply reminding your friends to go and vote.

Across London we polled 10.9%, putting us in 4th place overall, although in a number of boroughs we polled significantly higher than that particularly in Lewisham (18%), Hackney (23%) Islington (20%), Lambeth (18%) and Haringey (17.4%). In Lewisham, Hackney and Islington we came second across the borough, beating the Tories and Lib Dems.

We only have official figures for across the borough, rather than by constituency, although the count was carried out loosely by constituency, but with the borough-wide postal votes thrown in. Our sampling at the count suggested that we polled significantly better in Lewisham Deptford (around 23%) than in the rest of the borough, and we were pretty much neck and neck with Labour, if not slightly ahead.

Of course, if all of London had voted like Lewisham, we would have also elected Ladywell ward councillor Ute Michel as a Green MEP! That was always a long shot and I would have been delighted if it had happened, but I admit I'm slightly relieved we don't have to launch straight into a local council by-election campaign now!

The independent Tamil candidate Jan Jananayagam polled well in Lewisham and in other boroughs with significant Tamil populations, such as Redbridge, making her, as the BBC reports, one of the most successful independent candidates ever.

Our vote across England and Wales went up 44% and we polled 1.2 million votes across the UK (not sure if that figure includes Northern Ireland or not though). Sadly, although our existing MEPs in London and the South-East (Jean Lambert and Caroline Lucas) were re-elected, we narrowly missed making gains in several regions, in particular the North West, Eastern and South West regions. In the North West we were just 5,000 votes short of getting Peter Cranie elected, while in both Eastern and South West we were only 1% off.

Now, for real electoral anoraks (like me!), Mancunian Green has done a little post-Euro election quiz!