Somerset County Elections - Recap

The Final Score
Conservative 35 (gained 11)
Liberal Democrat 21 (lost 9)
Labour 2 (lost 2)

Seats Switching
LD > Con
Castle Cary, Frome North, Highbridge & Burnham on Sea South, Minehead, South Petherton, Somerton, Staplegrove, Street, Wincanton & Bruton

Lab > Con
Bridgewater East & Bawdrip, Bridgwater South

Overall, for Labour it's not as bad as it could have been, not as bad as it should have been and not as bad as it looked like it was going to be. But it says something about our party's prospects that we'll take 2 holds (one where we manage to win with only 30% of the vote) as a moderate success. It is bad, and we need to start working on getting colleagues for Andy and Dave at County Hall.

For the Tories, it's obviously a glorious success and congratulations to them for that while for the Lib Dems, I think they've taken Somerset a little bit for granted and it will be interesting to see how they react.

As pointers to the General Election - the data confirms that Wells and Bridgwater & West Somerset will be easy Tory holds, while the Lib Dem vote did hold up well enough in the Yeovil constituency that David Laws will sleep easy tonight. Taunton Deane on the basis of these results would stay Tory but I'm never going to make a prediction on that particular constituency. Somerton & Frome is interesting and with 4 of the Tory gains in that area on top of favourable boundary changes, the odds on a Tory gain have to be shortened. But there's something that makes me think that between David Heath and Annunziata Rees-Mogg the voters might want to stick to what they know.

Random sideissue: What happens to South West One now?