The 2002 Swindon Council election took place on 2 May 2002 to elect members of Swindon

Swindon (borough)

The Borough of Swindon is a local government authority in South West England. It is centred on the town of Swindon and forms part of the ceremonial county of Wiltshire...

 Unitary

Unitary authority

A unitary authority is a type of local authority that has a single tier and is responsible for all local government functions within its area or performs additional functions which elsewhere in the relevant country are usually performed by national government or a higher level of sub-national...

 Council in Wiltshire

Wiltshire

Wiltshire is a ceremonial county in South West England. It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset, Somerset, Hampshire, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire. It contains the unitary authority of Swindon and covers...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

. One third of the council was up for election and the council stayed under no overall control

No overall control

Within the context of local councils of the United Kingdom, the term No Overall Control refers to a situation in which no single party achieves a majority of seats and is analogous to a hung parliament...

.

After the election, the composition of the council was

• Labour
  Labour Party (UK)
  The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...
  
   29
• Conservative
  Conservative Party (UK)
  The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...
  
   22
• Liberal Democrat 8

Voting pilot

The election in Swindon was one of thirty that trialed different methods of voting or counting in the 2002 local elections

United Kingdom local elections, 2002

Local elections took place in many parts of England on 2 May 2002. All London borough council seats were elected as well a third of the seats on each of the Metropolitan Boroughs. Many unitary Authorities and District councils also had elections...

, with Swindon having a trial of voting via the internet

Internet

The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...

. The trial results had 5% of voters using the phone to cast a vote and over 10% voting via the internet. A survery in Swindon found that those who voted via the internet were more likely to be younger and male than those who voted at a polling station

Polling station

A polling place or polling station is where voters cast their ballots in elections.Since elections generally take place over a one- or two-day span on a periodic basis, often annual or longer, polling places are often located in facilities used for other purposes, such as schools, churches, sports...

. Overall turnout

Voter turnout

Voter turnout is the percentage of eligible voters who cast a ballot in an election . After increasing for many decades, there has been a trend of decreasing voter turnout in most established democracies since the 1960s...

in the election was 31.33%.

Election result

Ward results