Talk:2013 Oxfordshire County Council election

Gains and holds
Regarding the recent edits which have added and  to the divisional results - I think that these are misleading.

Four divisions retained both name and boundaries, these were: Abingdon East; Didcot Ladygrove; Grove & Wantage; and Shrivenham. One division changed its name, although its boundaries were unaltered: Witney East became Witney North & East. For these five, a gain/hold comparison is fair.

A further 17 divisions (such as Abingdon North) retained their names, but their boundaries were changed. In each case, territory was gained from one or more other divisions; and in five cases, territory was also lost to other divisions. The territory gained or lost was not always of the same political allegiance, so a gain/hold comparison is not necessarily fair.

The remaining 39 divisions - almost two-thirds of the County Council - were created by redrawing the division boundaries, in many cases radically. Sometimes, a new division would consist entirely of territory from just one of the old (for example, Abingdon South was formed entirely from part of Abingdon West), but more often, portions of two or more of the old divisions were combined under a new name. If all of the constituent divisions were of the same party, it might be fair to state that, for example, Banbury Calthorpe was a "Labour gain from Conservative" because although there had been no previous Banbury Calthorpe division, all of the four divisions (Banbury Easington; Banbury Grimsbury & Castle; Banbury Neithrop; Bloxham) from which it was formed had been Conservative previously. But this is not always the case, particularly when one of the old divisions had had two councillors, with different party allegiances. For example, the new Headington & Quarry division was won by the Liberal Democrats; but it was formed from portions of Barton & Churchill (one Labour & Co-operative, one Liberal Democrat) and portions of Headington & Marston (one Liberal Democrat and one Labour). Since 50% of the previous councillors had not been Liberal Democrat, is it fair to describe it as a Liberal Democrat hold?

I therefore feel that is misleading to apply and  to all of the divisions without a third-party source to verify these conclusions. -- Red rose64 (talk) 11:41, 27 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I have only just seen this comment, and I agree with your view. Firstly, although there are links to all the division results, these sources say nothing about gains and losses. Secondly, the normal practice in the case of boundary changes, for example in a general election after a boundary review, is that there is no 'gain/loss' for any changed seats, nor is there a swing.  The exception is where an academic exercise has been done to map old constituencies to new ones.  I don't suppose this has been done for the Oxfordshire CC seats, so the gain/loss information is meaningless and should be removed.  There is of course nothing wrong with comparing the total seats in the council before and after.  Sussexonian (talk) 19:32, 28 September 2013 (UTC)


 * There is a very very simple solution to this simply use the following template for the seats which have had significant boundary changes. Sport and politics (talk) 18:46, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Full names
Please see here for an example of the common names and therefor the names used by the parties and the candidates for the Conservatives to promoted their candidates. This is clearly first name and last name only. Other parties can be provided. Sport and politics (talk) 00:10, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
 * I asked at User talk:Sport and politics what the policy or guideline was that justified the shortening of candidates names. You have not provided one. The website of one political party is not a WP:RS for the names of any candidate who does not belong to that party.
 * When I added the candidates to this page, I carefully copied the names from the lists given on the Oxfordshire County Council website; and checked them again after the results were announced. These lists - prepared as they were by the staff of the Returning Officer - must be considered official. I gave each and every one of them as a source, which is why the article has over 60 references.
 * It is a misrepresentation of the name of a candidate to arbitrarily remove all but two (the first and last) of the words which make up his or her name. In the first place, you don't know that the first word is their everyday forename; in the second place, this gives the wrong surname to people with unhyphenated two-word surnames. The second case may be demonstrated with a check of, David Roger Nimmo Smith, whose surname is not Smith but Nimmo Smith; see Councillor David Nimmo Smith at Oxfordshire County Council - the email address is david.nimmo-smith [at] ... with a dot between forename and surname, but a hyphen between the two words of the surname. I can't give an immediate example of a candidate in Oxfordshire 2013 who goes by a name that isn't the first name; but such people do exist, and in the current cabinet we have John Vincent Cable - and then there is George Iain Duncan Smith who falls into both groups. We wouldn't call him George Smith. -- Red rose64 (talk) 16:54, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Coming here from WP:Elections and referendums, I do not believe middle names should be included. The only place for them is in the article about the person. Obviously if someone has a double-barrel surname, then both should be included. I don't think there is a guideline about this, so consensus has to be achieved here. Number   5  7  19:18, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
 * How should the shortened named be reliably determined? -- Red rose64 (talk) 19:32, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
 * The website provided by Sports and politics is a good start for the Conservative candidates. Local media too - the Oxford Times has lists of all the candidates with surnames in capital letters or on a separate row to mark them apart, so that should help identify any with double barrel names. Number   5  7  19:39, 18 February 2014 (UTC)