South East: Euro Elections

26 May 2014, 00:43 | Updated: 26 May 2014, 00:52

The whole of Europe has voted for its MEPs this week. The UK voted on Thursday but the count was held until Sunday until all the rest of Europe had held their ballots.

The 2014 Result

South East result: UKIP 4 Con 3 Green 1 Lab 1 LD 1

Background

The South East region of the UK returns 10 MEPs. They are elected on a Proportional voting system knowns as d.hont.

Each party provides a list of candidates and the seats are then handed out according to the proportion of the vote each party gets. Voters choose a party rather than individual candidates as in General or Local Elections (unless they wish to choose one individual independent candidate.)

In the 2009 European Elections, the South East returned  5 Conservatives; 2 Lib Dems; 1 UKIP, 1 Labour and 1 Green MEP. One UKIP member was the leader of the party, Nigel Farage. However the second UKIP MEP switched to the Conservatives in 2013.

These are the eighth Europe wide elections since the first direct elections in 1979. Before that the members were appointed by the National Parliament. In 2009 there were 766 members making it the second biggest parliament in the world (behind India.) The electorate in 2009 was 375 million; the largest trans-national democratic electorate in the world.

The results for the south east will be declared at the Southampton Guildhall by the City's returning officer, Mark Heath.

2014 Results in Voting Areas

The results are counted in Districts and Boroughs and collated in Southampton before the overall result is announced.

Our sister station LBC is reporting the following highlights

Conservatives top in Tunbridge Wells

UKIP top in UKIP top in Swale and Thanet, Ashford, Dover, Canterbury, Sevenoaks and Medway

UKIP top in Eastleigh, Portsmouth, Isle of Wight

UKIP top in Hastings, Eastbourne.

Con win West Oxfordshire, South Oxon, Cherwell, Vale of White Horse.

Labour win in Brighton and Hove with Greens second