The new President of the Liberal Democrats is….
Many congratulations to him on his election and commiserations to Christine Jardine. Both were superb candidates and fought an election in the best traditions of Liberal Democrat internal elections.
I’d also like to give my thanks also to the staff and volunteers who have been counting in Liberal Democrat HQ since early this morning and who have run this set of elections whilst also preparing for and playing their part in the General Election campaign.
The result in full can be found here:
Christine Jardine: 10,164 (41.40%)
Mark Pack: 14,381 (58.59%) – ELECTED
Non-transferable votes: 0
Total votes cast: 24545
Mark will take up his post as President on the 1st January and will serve for a three year term.
I’d also like to pay tribute to Sal Brinton, who has been our President for the last five years, through some of the most exciting and challenging times in British politics.
Sal has done a fantastic job and I would like to wish her the best, on behalf of all members in her new role as a Vice President of ALDE (the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats in Europe).
Congratulations again to Mark on his election.
* Mike Dixon is Chief Executive of the Liberal Democrats
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11 Comments
Really, really good news. I think anyone who’s dug through Pack’s blog and his party work over the past huge chunk of time (back to the mid 2000s, I think?) knows that he is sharp and has a real vision.
This is very good News, Mark Pack has been thinking hard about where we need to go for a long time.
The downside to this result is that only 1 in 5 of us took part. We need to find some way of spreading all those Internal Elections out so they dont all arrive in a huge, soggy lump. I love elections usually, I am a Nerds Nerd but my heart sank when I opened up the mass of Votes for people I had mostly never heard of, standing for unfamiliar Posts. I do not blame most members for giving up at the start.
And now to work, Mark. There is a lot to do.
Congratulations to Mark. Is it polite to talk about strategy on this thread? Oh well…
I believe in the core vote strategy. Or more simply, I find it difficult to comprehend that the national vote share for the party of liberals could be significantly less than the proportion of liberally inclined voters. I’m thinking of people in no-hope seats, no tactical voting factors, who vote liberal because you will never elect a liberal unless you vote for one.
Of course, there are liberal socialists and conservatives, and they might vote otherwise at different elections. Maybe at this election Liberal Democrats have appealed to natural liberals or re-awakened it a bit. But the vote share is still below the naturally inclined liberal share, and candidates still lost deposits.
Core vote strategy does not mean appealing solely to university educated people or public sector “soft job” employees. Liberals can win votes from outsiders, people who feel excluded by the structure of trade unions, small business owners, people who see that “big” doesn’t include them, people who have seen that the state is a poor carer.
Liberal core voters are a funny bunch. Once you assemble them in a place, you find more of them than you thought.
I have to agree with Paul Barker. I never attend conference so voting was to a large extent driven by profile on LDV or other media or press releases. So president was a choice where there was name recognition but for other posts there was far too much reading of statements from candidates I had never heard of and I gave up on many posts and skipped to the few ones that interested me.
Congratulations to Mark – he will make a great campaigning Party President!
So sort of 20%+ turnout. Says something about the way the party does things nowadays.
I gave up trying to vote on line. Far too slow to read about the candidates. I only voted for those who names I knew. For me I find that paper is better and prefer reading about the candidates.
Well this is Great! As something of a newby member of the party – how come I never received ANY notice that this was even happening – let alone how to cast a vote?
@Mike When did you join the party?
You had to have been a member I think by 30th September to be able to take part. Voting took place from 25th October and, while the internal elections for party committees were announced in November, the presidency was counted yesterday due to the election and Christine Jardine being a candidate.
@Caron
I joined on 9th September.