The Liberal Democrats have secured a majority on the Cambridgeshire County Council, while Paul Bristow (Conservative) has been elected mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough in Thursday’s local elections (01/05).

Bristow secured 28% of the vote in Thursday’s election with 60,243 votes, succeeding Labour’s Nik Johnson as mayor. Meanwhile, the Lib Dems won 31/61 seats on the County Council, an 11-seat improvement from 2021, followed by the Conservatives and Reform UK with ten each, Labour with five, and the Green Party with three. Two races were won by independent candidates.

In two Cambridge city council by-elections, Liberal Democrat candidates flipped seats previously held by Labour members. Labour retains its majority in the city council.

Meanwhile, of the two University students and five staff members who ran in the elections, all lost except for Peter Rees, who took the Newnham seat for the Green Party.

Students Esmé Hennessy and Chloe Mosonyi stood for the Green Party for the Market and Trumpington seats, respectively, while incumbent Market councillor, Labour’s Nick Gay, Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry and a Fellow at Christ’s, was also defeated.

Rees defeated another staff member in Newnham, Yvonne Novis, Head of Science Information Services at the University Library, who stood for Labour.

The other staff candidates were Churchill College Alumni Officer Elizabeth McWilliams, who ran for Labour in Castle, and Hannah Charlotte Copley, a MRC Clinical Research Training Fellow at Addenbrooke’s who ran for the Greens in Chesterton. Copley also ran in the West Chesterton by-election.

Last month, a Varsity survey found that among students, 57% of survey respondents planned to vote in the upcoming election. Among respondents, 37% expressed support for the Green Party and 27% for Labour, representing a majority leftward lean. Only 7% of respondents expressed support for the Conservative Party.

These results in Cambridgeshire come as Reform UK gained significant ground across the country. Reform’s Ryan Coogan placed second in the mayoral contest with 23% of the vote, beating Labour candidate Anna Smith’s 20% share, while Reform candidates took ten seats in the county council.

Bristow said: “It’s surreal. It’s fantastic to have got that job. Being the MP for Peterborough was just about the most important thing I’d ever done. I found another important thing to do and that’s become the mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough.”

Coogan congratulated Bristow: “Hats off to him. He beat us fair and square in this election. With Reform being second, we are the official opposition to the mayoral candidacy here in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, and we will certainly be holding the manifesto to account.”

Five candidates faced off after the incumbent mayor, Johnson, announced in February that he would not seek re-election. Johnson won the seat in 2021, an unexpected victory in a previously Conservative post. In a statement, he noted the “very heavy toll” of the office.

According to a report from The i Paper, the key issues in the race included crime, transport, and overdevelopment concerns.

This mayoral election was conducted using first-past-the-post voting, unlike the 2021 and 2017 elections, which used a supplementary system where voters noted a second-choice candidate. This change came after Boris Johnson’s Conservative government scrapped the supplementary system in local elections, arguing it was “confusing” and could lead to the election of a “loser” candidate.

Cambridge residents also voted in two by-elections to replace two city council members following their resignations. Both races were won by Liberal Democrats, increasing their share of the City Council to 12 out of 42 seats. Labour still controls the council with 24 seats.

In East Chesterton Ward, Bob Illingworth replaced council deputy leader Alice Gilderdale, who resigned following her move away from the city, while Jamie Dalzell replaced Sam Carling in West Chesterton Ward.