Independent Simon Hayes today beat veteran Tory Michael Mates in the race to become Hampshire’s first Police and Crime Commissioner.
After the first round of counting today, it was revealed that no candidate had the necessary 50 per cent of votes for an outright win.
So a new count of second preference votes began to decide the winner from Mr Mates and Mr Hayes, who led the field in the first count.
The results of that count were: Mates 52,616, Hayes 47,632, Rayment 38,813, Goodall 27,197, Jerrard 24,443, West 21,185.
Shortly after 4.30pm, Mr Hayes was declared the overall winner.
Mr Hayes recorded a total of 80,669 votes including the first and second preference counts, with Mr Mates getting 65,804 votes.
Just 15 per cent of the electorate in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight turned out to vote for their first ever police and crime commissioner.
In elections which have seen poor turn outs nationwide, the apathy of voters appears to be reflected in our area.
Figures just in show the lowest turn out for Hampshire and the Isle of Wight was in Gosport, where 7,181 people took to the pools - 11.5% of those eligible to vote
Portsmouth had the second lowest turn out, with 11.6% of eligible people voting. In total 16,919 city residents used their vote out of a potential 146,452.
The highest turn out were in Winchester with 20.2% and East Hampshire with 19.3%. Elsewhere, the turn out was 14.2% in Havant and in Fareham it was 14.7%.
Across the two counties, a total of 217,481 people voted out of a potential 1,448,374.
The six candidates for our area - independent candidates Simon Hayes or Don Jerrard, Labour candidate Jacqui Rayment, Tory candidate Michael Mates, Lib Dem candidate David Goodall, or UKIP candidate Stephen West - now face an anxious wait to see who will become the first police and crime commissioner.
The victorious candidate for the controversial £85,000 a year post is to be announced later today.
Top priority for the newly elected commissioner is set to be the appointment of a new chief constable.
Alex Marshall, who is currently the force’s top officer, last month announced his departure to become the chief executive officer of the new National College of Policing.
The commissioner takes the reins from Hampshire Police Authority at a time when the force is battling to save up to £55m due to government spending cuts.
Already police stations and front desks are shut, more services are being shared with other forces, redundancies have been made and some officers have not been replaced in a bid to save cash..
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