The council elections are over, and a leader has been unseated, but how did your vote translate into seats on the council?

There were 60 seats up for grabs, and with more than 200 candidates standing that means plenty of people going home unhappy with the results.

However, due to our voting system, first-past-the-post, sometimes votes across the borough won’t translate into a proportional amount of seats.

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In the FPTP system, the candidate with more votes than any other candidate in each area wins the seat.

This is as opposed to a proportional system, where votes for a party might be tallied up and then seats allocated based on the proportion of votes each party received across the borough.

Because of the way it’s divided up, this can also mean candidates that lose in some areas might get more votes than candidates who win in other areas, depending on turnout and how many candidates stand and are voted for in an area.

Proportion of votes

Here’s the breakdown of voting proportions in this year’s election. Each ward was electing three councillors this year, so everyone got up to three votes to use, though you didn’t have to use all of them.

The Labour Party benefitted from this the most – despite getting just 45.9 per cent of votes in this year’s election, the party has retained overall control of the council with 32 of 60 seats, or just more than 53 per cent.

The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, despite having just 60 votes between them, have ended up with 11 seats and 10 seats respectively.

Since the Conservatives now have the second-highest number of seats on the council behind Labour, its leader and deputy leader will be eligible for special allowances, while the Lib Dems will not.

Independent candidates received just over six per cent of seats in the council despite receiving more than 15 per cent of the vote, though it is more difficult to compare as independent candidates may have completely different opinions to one another.

The Failsworth Independent Party benefitted from the system, receiving five per cent of council seats despite getting just over two per cent of the vote.

Individual councillors

Some councillors needed more support than others to win.

The elected councillor with the highest number of votes was Labour’s Shoab Akhtar, in Werneth – which was the area with the highest turnout in Oldham. Akhtar received 2,923 votes.

At the other end of the spectrum was the St James’ Labour candidate Josh Charters. Charters received just 743 votes to be elected, or around a quarter of the number Akhtar received.

Candidates who failed to make the cut included Coldhurst candidate Montaz Ali Azad, standing as an independent he received 1,935 votes. Werneth’s Lib Dem Asghar Ali received 1,700 votes and independent Aisha Kouser, standing in St Marys’ received 1,658 votes.

This means Coldhurst’s independent candidate, who missed out on election, still beat 51 of the 60 elected Oldham councillors by number of votes alone.

Even former council leader Amanda Chadderton, who received 923 votes but lost her seat on the night, maybe could have been saved in a different system – seven winning candidates across the borough, from the Lib Dems, Failsworth Independents, Conservatives, and Labour Party – all received below 923 votes.