Description
It is bounded to the following wards: north by Cockett, east by Uplands, south by the coast, southwest by Mayals and west by Killay North and Killay South.
Cockett is the name of an electoral ward in the City and County of Swansea, Wales, UK. The ward is coterminous with the Cockett community. It elects four councillors.
Uplands is name of an electoral ward in the City and County of Swansea, Wales, UK.
Mayals is the name of an electoral ward of the City and County of Swansea, Wales, UK. It is also part of the Mumbles Community.
The electoral ward is divided into a number of polling districts by the City and County of Swansea. They are Tycoch, Sketty Park, Vivian Road, Sketty Green, Derwen Fawr, Gwerneinon. It is the largest ward in the UK Parliament and Welsh Assembly Swansea West.
Swansea West is a constituency of the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It elects one Member of Parliament (MP) by the first past the post system of election, and is currently represented by Geraint Davies of the Labour Co-operative party, who was first elected in the constituency in 2010.
Due to the large size of Sketty, there are recognisable sub-divisions of Sketty. Whilst the boundaries used for electoral or postal purposes are clearly defined, although they do not always correspond, in the public mind the boundaries are not totally clear. Indeed, many residents of some of the sub-divisions would describe themselves as a residents of the sub-division rather than use the term Sketty. Indeed, residents of the western part of the Uplands would consider their vicinity as part of "Sketty", as indeed would the post office.
Politics
The Sketty Ward is the largest in the Swansea West Parliamentary/ Welsh Assembly Constituency, and is one of only two five member wards for the purposes of City and County of Swansea Elections. This single ward five member structure allows the electorate to vote for up to five candidates, and electors are free to either put all their votes behind one party or to split their vote between parties.
The three main UK-wide parties seem to have reasonable local infrastructures in the area, and have contested the vast majority of seats since the first elections to the City and County of Swansea authority in 1995. The Conservative Party, which only contested four out of five seats in 1999, is an exception. A defeated independent candidate in those elections then stood, and won, as an official Conservative candidate in a 2000 by-election. Plaid Cymru, whilst it has not contested every seat, contests every election. There have in the past been a small number of non-party candidates, and in the 2004 elections the Green Party also put up a full slate of five candidates.
The Conservative Party, officially the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom. It is currently the governing party, having been so since the 2010 general election, where a coalition government with the Liberal Democrats was formed. In 2015, the Conservatives led by David Cameron won a surprise majority and formed the first majority Conservative government since 1992. However, the snap election on 8 June 2017 resulted in a hung parliament, and the party lost its parliamentary majority. It is reliant on the support of a Northern Irish political party, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), in order to command a majority in the House of Commons through a confidence-and-supply deal. The party leader, Theresa May, has served as both Leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister since July 2016. It is the largest party in local government with 9,008 councillors. The Conservative Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United Kingdom, the other being its modern rival, the Labour Party.
Plaid Cymru is a social-democratic political party in Wales advocating Welsh independence from the United Kingdom within the European Union.
The Green Party of England and Wales is a green, left-wing political party in England and Wales. Headquartered in London, since September 2018, its Co-Leaders are Siân Berry and Jonathan Bartley. The Green Party has one Member of Parliament in the House of Commons, one representative in the House of Lords, and three Members of the European Parliament. It has various councillors in UK local government and two members of the London Assembly.
The area has seen considerable electoral volatility, and there appears to be evidence of split ticket voting. Whilst party factors remain strong, there seems to be evidence of voters taking into account other factors, such as personality and perhaps geographic factors due to the size of the ward. In recent elections, (post 1995) whilst there is evidence of considerable voting shifts between parties, no party has ever had the ignominy of its vote completely collapsing, and the area has seen some hotly contested local elections.
In 1995, the ward elected four councillors. This election was a "mid-term election" towards the end of the Conservative period in Government. Labour won three seats, and an Independent candidate won one. The Independent councillor later joined the Liberal Democrats. These elections were probably the worst for the Conservative Party in the area, and the best for Labour.
The Labour Party is a centre-left political party in the United Kingdom which has been described as an alliance of social democrats, democratic socialists and trade unionists. The party's platform emphasises greater state intervention, social justice and strengthening workers' rights. Labour is a full member of the Party of European Socialists and Progressive Alliance, and holds observer status in the Socialist International. As of 2017, the party was considered the "largest party in Western Europe" in terms of party membership, with more than half a million members.
The Liberal Democrats are a liberal British political party formed in 1988 from a merger of the Liberal Party and the Social Democratic Party (SDP), a splinter group from the Labour Party which had formed the SDP–Liberal Alliance from 1981. Through the Liberal Party, the Liberal Democrats are directly descended from the Whigs, one of the earliest formal political parties in the world.
In 1999, the ward elected five councillors. This election was held the same day as the first elections to the National Assembly for Wales, and was set against a controversial backdrop concerning a Welsh Labour leadership election, and the Labour vote predictably suffered. The results were the most eclectic seen. The Conservatives won two seats, the Liberal Democrats also won two seats and Labour won one.
In 2000, there was a by-election caused by the death of the Labour Councillor. The seat was then won by the Conservatives. This election confirmed the previous year's re-emergence of the Conservatives, although of course this election took place on a lower turnout than the other elections.
In 2004, the ward again elected five councillors. These elections were set against the national backdrop of a controversial war in Iraq, and the local backdrop of the closure of Swansea Leisure Centre. These elections saw Labour lose control, and a coalition of Liberal Democrats, Conservatives, and independents take control of Swansea Council, the main local issue at the time was a planning issue concerning a proposed ASDA store in Derwen Fawr; however, there was little if any dispute between the parties on this matter. In Sketty, the Conservatives won two seats and the Liberal Democrats won three. In 2007, one of the two conservative councillors became an Independent when the Conservastive group left the ruling coalition. He joined the Liberal Democrats in 2008.
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