Electoral Performance
The Respect Party sought to challenge Prime Minister Tony Blair's New Labour Party from the left at the London Assembly and European Parliament elections in 2004, and gained a quarter of a million votes. The party claims that this support was achieved primarily as a result of the anti-war protests and by attracting votes from "Old Labour" supporters who felt Blair had moved the party too far to the right and away from core socialist beliefs. The correlation between the performance of Respect and the Muslim population of an area suggested that it succeeded in attracting the votes of some Muslims who felt alienated by Labour's support for the war in Iraq. Respect almost immediately won a council seat in Preston as SWP member Michael Lavalette was elected as a Socialist Alliance candidate in 2003, but subsequently voted with the majority of the SWP to wind down the Socialist Alliance in favour of the newly formed party, who was joined by a former Labour councillor, Steve Brooks.
Read more about this topic: Respect Party
Famous quotes containing the words electoral and/or performance:
“Nothing is more unreliable than the populace, nothing more obscure than human intentions, nothing more deceptive than the whole electoral system.”
—Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 B.C.)
“The way to go to the circus, however, is with someone who has seen perhaps one theatrical performance before in his life and that in the High School hall.... The scales of sophistication are struck from your eyes and you see in the circus a gathering of men and women who are able to do things as a matter of course which you couldn’t do if your life depended on it.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)