The dark arts of Green Party propaganda

 

Bridges ward was the Green Party's only target seat in Gateshead. In the local elections in May they abandoned their previous target (Crawcrook and Greenside) to pour their resources into Bridges. They didn't win (Labour held on in what is normally a stronghold for them) but the Greens narrowed the gap. So when a vacancy occurred in the ward in the summer, the Greens were rubbing their hands in glee at the prospect of a winnable by-election.

To cut a long story short, they turned up at the count looking confident, believing they would emerge from the count as the victors. Instead, the glee turned to glum as the Lib Dem vote soared from 4th to 2nd place. Instead of coming 1st, the Greens dropped to 3rd place and their actual vote and share of the vote slumped (as did Labour's.)

Move on a few weeks and the shell-shocked Greens have managed to get out a leaflet which explained somehow that the by-election was some kind of triumph for them. And they did this by removing all references to the Lib Dems. Note the graph above. The leaflet claimed the Greens "gained" votes (they lost half the votes they got in May). And it implies they are in 2nd place in the by-election (they were 3rd by a slender 2 votes!)

So, just to ensure you have the results for ALL the parties that contested the by-election, here are the FULL results with no parties edited out.