UK By-elections thread, 2021-

[Tintrlvr]

If we look at English by-elections (and excluding Southend West) we have the following average vote share changes

Conservative: -10.7%
Labour -4.4%
Lib Dem +11.4%

These elections also include Hartlepool (the first by-election; a Conservative gain) and Batley and Spen (intervention).

Without Hartlepool (a reverse intervention), the Tory vote drops on average by 15.5

If we look at the same picture in the 1992-1997 Parliament, but only during the years Blair was leader of the Labour Party, the Tory share dropped by 17.7 points on average (Labour up 13.9, Lib Dems down 2.0). These were contests on more favourable seats for Labour than the current crops of seats up for election.

So the Tory share is as down by almost as much as it was during the period in which they were heading for the exit.

The Lib Dem gains now are even more impressive given that in most seats they are recovering from relative historic lows for a third party.

Though is that Lib Dem average that meaningful? In three out of elections they got more than 45% of the vote, in the remaining five they couldn't break 4%. It's a pattern of really striking advances where they're the most plausible anti-Tory option and absolutely nothing where they aren't.

I presume that as long as strategic voting is all the rage, you'll see more and more of that.

It would be really interesting if we got a by-election in a seat where the 2019 result was something like Con 45 Lab 25 LD 23 where the LDs are in third but with a strong base and requiring a much lower swing than their recent gains and Labour is in second and isn't completely out of contention but far enough back that a straight Con->Lab flip is unlikely.

It's worth noticing that in the 1992-1997 by-elections Labour gained a lot more than they are now, especially in straight Con-Lab fights (Dudley West, SE Staffs and Wirral to a lesser extent had Con-Lab swings that nowadays seem like only the LDs can achieve).

[Tintrlvr]

Do these Lib Dem victories portend anything enduring in all these safe Tory seats? Or are they just one time by-election protest votes and these seats will return to the fold in the GE? Would be interesting if we saw a similar phenomenon to what happened in Australia here.

Tiverton and North Shropshire look like normal Leave voting safe Tory seats. The LibDems are on track to do very well in highly educated Remain voting (or narrowly Leave seats) imo, I think they retain Chesham and Amersham. It does show the Tories have a very low floor to a minor party opposition.

Tiverton is also in an area with significant LD history, though. I think they could well retain this one, although the boundary changes will be a bit of a wildcard. I agree North Shropshire is the biggest stretch - but you never know, if the Tories are getting walloped nationwide they won't have the resources to spare to try to fight to win it back.

[Tintrlvr]

Do these Lib Dem victories portend anything enduring in all these safe Tory seats? Or are they just one time by-election protest votes and these seats will return to the fold in the GE? Would be interesting if we saw a similar phenomenon to what happened in Australia here.

Tiverton and North Shropshire look like normal Leave voting safe Tory seats. The LibDems are on track to do very well in highly educated Remain voting (or narrowly Leave seats) imo, I think they retain Chesham and Amersham. It does show the Tories have a very low floor to a minor party opposition.

Tiverton is also in an area with significant LD history, though. I think they could well retain this one, although the boundary changes will be a bit of a wildcard. I agree North Shropshire is the biggest stretch - but you never know, if the Tories are getting walloped nationwide they won't have the resources to spare to try to fight to win it back.

Current proposal is sending Tiverton in a new cross-county seat with Minehead.

I know. Somerset if anything has been more LD-friendly than Devon recently. Although Minehead perhaps less so. But in any case it’s trading super-Tory areas around Honiton and Axminster for less Tory areas in Somerset.

[Tintrlvr]

I would think that in the current environment, there is not a single solitary Tory seat in all of the UK that could be considered safe in a byelection context. Seriously, can anyone name ANY seat at all that the Tories would be favoured to hold if a byelection took place tomorrow? I can't

There are still a bunch in eastern England generally (especially Essex, but really in a belt running from Lincolnshire south to Kent, even including a few seats within London, such as Hornchurch and Upminster) that I would think are safe. I think, without checking, that that is at least 100 seats total. Really any seat with a majority of more than 20% where the Lib Dems are irrelevant (which let's say means less than 10% of the vote in 2019). Those seats are concentrated in the belt I mentioned but there are some outside of it, too. Can be a bit of a "feel" thing since there are some seats where the Lib Dems got low votes in 2019 but still might have potential.

I would think that in the current environment, there is not a single solitary Tory seat in all of the UK that could be considered safe in a byelection context. Seriously, can anyone name ANY seat at all that the Tories would be favoured to hold if a byelection took place tomorrow? I can't

North East Hampshire? (maybe)
EDIT: After looking at 2019 results, I would put forth Sleaford and North Hykeham.

North East Hampshire I think would fall to the Lib Dems in a by-election held tomorrow. Sleaford and North Hykeham is definitely in the group I mentioned above, though.

[Tintrlvr]

Bump. Chatter today from a Times article on by-elections likely pending later this year in the three seats where Johnson's resignation honours mean MPs leaving for the House of Lords.

Dumfries and Galloway would probably be the most uncertain given the SNP's current difficulties - maybe Labour could even surge to win it, or at the least it would be a close three-way race between Tories, SNP (both losing vote share) and Labour, with Labour and maybe also the LDs gaining significant ground from both anti-SNP and anti-Tory tactical unwind.

Reading West is a snooze fest on current polling, easy Labour pick-up.

Mid-Bedfordshire I imagine the LDs would throw everything at and should be able to put up a strong second but a gain would be challenge.

[Tintrlvr]

Are you sure you mean Dumfries/Galloway, and not Selby?

Which would be a tough ask for Labour based on the 2019 result, but they weren't very far behind in last year's local elections in the seat - and are only likely to have improved their position by then.

The Times article was focused on Allister Jack but apparently events have moved further today and that one won't happen this year.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/rishi-sunak-by-election-peerage-boris-johnson-tf36hgtrl

Selby and Ainsty would be a reach seat but potentially winnable for Labour.

[Tintrlvr]

In that context, it shouldn't be forgotten the Airdrie/Shotts contest in May 2021 was closer than some had expected - in an environment where the SNP was still hegemonic and ScotLab stagnant.

Though yes, it still has to be won!

Airdrie and Shotts was strategic squeeze - the SNP vote went up compared to 2019, the Labour vote just went up more (because there were more squeezable non-Labour unionists than non-SNP nationalists). But the unsqueezable rump Tory vote that would never vote Labour or SNP was still there, and otherwise there were no more votes to squeeze (other parties, including the LDs, got only 2.3% between them).

Labour obviously needs more than just strategic squeeze to win this by-election, they need direct SNP to Labour switchers.

[Tintrlvr]

If Mid Bedfordshire is to be held on the same day the writ needs to be moved and thus Dorries needs to be out of the Commons by next Wednesday.

Odds on her resigning next Thursday?

I suppose they could then schedule the by-election for July 21 out of pure spite. Might help the Tories hold on since tactical voters might get confused by strong Labour performances in the former two.

[Tintrlvr]

The writ has just been moved for the resulting Somerton & Froome by-election, and so it will presumably be on 20 July along with Selby & Ainsty and Uxbridge & South Ruislip.

I appreciate the phonetic spelling of "Frome" for all of the mispronunciations that are surely happening as people read the posts in this thread out loud.

[Tintrlvr]

Yikes. She's been a councillor for a while in a competitive seat so I would think she would generally be capable as a candidate. Maybe just a bad morning?

[Tintrlvr]

My forecasts:

Somerton & Frome: LD majority around 10,000 (huge swing)
Selby & Ainsty: Labour majority around 4,000 (huge swing)
Uxbridge & South Ruislip: Labour majority also around 4,000 (i.e., a much lower swing than Selby but ending up at about the same result)

[Tintrlvr]

Betting markets have been moving against the Tories over the course of the evening. Probably a mix of noise and some activists who are sure it's decided. It's probably most phenomenal simply from a betting perspective that the LDs are at 99% odds to win Somerton & Frome. Who is risking £100 to win £1?

[Tintrlvr]

I would go further than others. Labour shouldn’t just be winning this, they should be doing so comfortably if the polls are remotely accurate.

Though a by-election is much tougher for Labour than a GE in this context as they can’t use the ‘give us a majority’ messaging which will be the centrepiece of their Scottish campaign.

I'm not sure "give us a majority" is a winning message anyway. It seems like left-wing voters who have voted SNP in the past would probably prefer a Labour minority that needs the SNP to govern to a Labour majority.

[Tintrlvr]

Commons has voted (without a division) to suspend Peter Bone for six weeks.

Bone won up to as much as 62% of the vote in 2019, with Labour less than half that. So a long way to come back from.

However, the seat has an 18k Tory majority - smaller than Tamworth (19.6k), Mid Beds (24.6k), Somerton (19.2k), Selby (20.1k). Clear two-way Labour-Conservative race - the Lib Dems rarely even keep their deposit there these days.

Between here and the likely Labour romp in Blackpool, are the Lib Dems really going to sit out a set of by-elections?

I don't see what purpose it would serve for them to try really hard in two no-hope seats to only get maybe at maximum 12-15% of the vote. Better to write both seats off. They've never tried hard in every single by-election that comes up. Mid Bedfordshire was an obviously different circumstance where they were always in with a shout and probably would have won easily if Labour had not seriously contested the seat as well.

[Tintrlvr]

Between here and the likely Labour romp in Blackpool, are the Lib Dems really going to sit out a set of by-elections?

They'll just put up paper candidates, and provide the bare-minimum funding. Enough to print some leaflets, and rent one minivan so they can bus in enough activists for a wee photo-op near the end of the camapign.

Tbh - they'll probably spend at least as much time in Solihull (in the off-chance that one actually gets triggered there) as they will in either/both of these seats.

Solihull would definitely be an interesting by-election because the Lib Dems really are much weaker locally now than when they were winning the seat. (I think they actually have no councillors within the boundaries of the parliamentary seat; the Lib Dem seats on Solihull council are all in Meriden.) I wonder if the Greens would seriously contest.

[Tintrlvr]

Does the Rochdale seat change much in redistribution? Presumably no matter who wins the byelection its almost certain Labour wins the seat in the general election and this byelection will tell us absolutely nothing about national trends.

From Labour's POV what is the least bad outcome? Ali still winning under the Labour label but having to sit as an independent? Danczuk winning and giving Reform UK a seat? Galloway winning? A Tory coming up the middle? Could the Lib Dems fill the vacuum, they held this seat many years ago

The Lib Dems are tainted by *who* held this seat many years ago.

While there is certainly truth in this, I think it's vastly overstated, and the fall of the Lib Dems in Rochdale is not really any more severe or pervasive than in other left-wing areas where the Lib Dems were influential before the Coalition. If anything, what was strange was the prior Lib Dem strength, which before the Blair years was quite unusual for a place like Rochdale.

In local elections, the Lib Dems mainly win the handful of middle class mostly white wards, but there is a surprisingly high Lib Dem vote in the Muslim areas as well (if you look at recent local elections, the Lib Dems were winning in the mid-30s in many of the Muslim seats with Labour in the high 50s). This probably means it is harder than one might expect for the Lib Dems to advance in this by-election as a significant portion of the non-Labour Muslim dissenter vote that still votes Lib Dem locally will go to Galloway.

[Tintrlvr]

Has there been any recent news of Rochdale at all? The by-election is tomorrow, isn't it? Given how chaotic things were looking a couple of weeks ago, any rumblings of whether Ali is likely to win easily, Galloway is making inroads (or not), Lib Dems or someone else having a secret surge?

[Tintrlvr]

The only people likely to have much of a clue if they were to bother (i.e. Labour) are not campaigning, so it's not surprising that no one really knows. No on else involved will have anything approximating sufficient accurate-ish information to be of much use.

Fair enough. Looking forward to an OMRLP victory tomorrow. (Do we know if results will be reported tomorrow night or Friday morning?)

[Tintrlvr]

Can Galloway hold the seat in the general election?

A lot of different stars would have to align for that to happen, but in a coming Labour landslide where they will (likely) have a normal candidate, basically no chance.

Although if everyone expects a Labour landslide there may be some effect of feeling comfortable with a local protest vote (whereas if the election looks close, there would be more pressure to elect a Labour MP).

Seems like it was a mistake for the Lib Dems to not try here, but on the other hand unless they could get some direct votes from Galloway, the numbers wouldn’t have worked out for them even if they were more effective at squeezing down Labour and the Tories and ate Tully’s lunch entirely.

[Tintrlvr]

One other update: the Tories won that council by-election in Hazlemere. Their vote share wasn't very convincing (a lot of votes went to an independent candidate) but it does suggest that that boundary change was unhelpful for the Chesham & Amersham Lib Dems.

I don’t think much can be taken from the Hazlemere result. A strong independent ran the Tories very close, and the LDs did gain a lot from previously being in the single digits. Without an independent, it might very well have gone LD.