UK local by-elections, 2017

[IceAgeComing]

There's also the fact that in the past the Libs have sometimes done very well in local elections even in places where they've never challenged during a general election; but lots of that support disappears before a General Election.  That's a pretty constant trend: in the mid 90s in the dying embers of the Major government the projected national share of the vote at every local election (this is basically taking the data from local election results and doing something to it to produce what those results would suggest the national picture would be; can't claim to understand exactly what) had the Lib Dems in the mid 20s: indeed in 1996 they even passed the Tories in terms of the number of Councillors that they had.  In 1997; they got 16% of the vote which was down from 1997 - they did gain a load of seats but that was all in places where Labour hadn't a hope in hell even in 1997; in places where Labour were competitive they went nowhere even losing a few seats that they'd held for years.  The other results we have for the Lib Dems are less rosy though: in the Scottish Parliament elections they went no where and finished behind the Greens; in the Welsh Assembly election they went backwards and lost all of their list seats to UKIP.  Now that was all before the Brexit referendum and I think that now they'd do better, but its not a great sign for them that in the closest thing to a General Election - at least in terms of how much people actually care about it - they've gone nowhere.

[IceAgeComing]

There was a slightly more important election here last night that everyone is examining right now

Labour gained a seat in Canterbury, which hinted at the Parliamentary result.

[IceAgeComing]

It isn't that surprising when you think about it - these are places that historically were relatively affluent but reliant on seasonal work, and the latter has declined very sharply since then and many of these places have serious economic problems that aren't being addressed by the government.  My Dad's family comes from the Isle of Wight (which swung to the Tories in the last election, although Labour had their best result for an incredibly long time - it also has a very large counter-culture element that isn't present in many of the other seats) and in some of the more traditional seaside places (especially Sandown) the decline is very evident even in the last few years - although other villages on the island like Ventnor seem to be doing a lot better for whatever reason.

The big talking point about places like Rotherham and the north was that UKIP were like a 'gateway drug' or whatever; a first step for life-long Labour voters in their path to voting Tory.  At the risk of sounding like a bit of an idiot in the future when this doesn't happen - but maybe in these places the reverse may have happened to some extent?  The problem with this is that the seaside places in which Labour did best in were the ones which had a less strong UKIP vote which suggests that is totally wrong...