UK local by-elections, 2024

[JimJamUK]

Huh. Reform actually winning a vote share in line with their national polling - that’s novel.

It only took one of the most UKIPy wards in the country to achieve 😁

[JimJamUK]

Cazenove needs some explanation. I think the main point is that the Conservative candidate is a former Lib Dem councillor who obviously had a lot of personal support, especially in the Haredi Jewish community, which is large in this area. (Though the ward is only 24% Jewish, so either he got a fair amount of non-Jewish support as well or there was significant differential turnout.)  The other thing is Labour's candidate problems: their candidate was briefly suspended from the party over "gender critical" social media activity and the campaign stopped; it restarted before election day but this may help to explain why Labour did so badly.

Given the very high turnout for a by-election (especially given the cold weather and defending party suspending their candidate), I think we assume so.

[JimJamUK]

I still find it a little surprising how little the Tories have suffered at local level in Northants (especially North Northants) for what happened to the county council.
[/quote]
To some extent it was already baked into the results in 2021. The Tory vote fell about 10% from 2017 so they did suffer, it’s just that a Tory leaning council is a very Tory year can still give the Tories the lions share of seats.

[JimJamUK]

Does nearly 10% for Propel in Cardiff surprise anyone else?

Not too much. They are essentially a personality cult and have some campaigning capacity, which they’ve presumably been able to focus on this ward unlike in 2022 when it was holding McEvoy’s seat.