The overall turn-out in the Sussex Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) election rose from from 15.82% of the electorate in November 2012 to 23.14% in the recent May election.The data are not disaggregated to Rye but the turn-out in Rother was 20.12% of the electorate.
Some 14,767 Rother residents cast a valid vote in the election and Katy Bourne gained 41.78% of the first preference votes across the county. The Labour candidate, with 22.25% of the vote was in second place county-wide, but in Rother the UKIP candidate took second place.
Nationally there is evidence of an increase in partisan voting with the number of independent PCCs dropping from 11 to 3. This may be attributable to running PCC elections alongside local council elections but there is neither clarity nor uniformity in the evidence as yet. With the average turnout in the PCC elections in England at 24.5% a more pertinent question might be the continuation of the role of PCC given a persistently low turnout.
Photo: David McHugh
Image Credits: David McHugh .
I turned up by mistake. If I had realised it was only for the pic I wouldn’t have bothered. Especially as I had no idea who I was voting for as no candidate had advertised/ campained for the position