UK By-elections thread, 2021-

[Oryxslayer]

Johnson has resigned. If Labour fail to flip Uxbridge something unusual will need to have happened.

[Oryxslayer]

LOL Boris Johnson.

BUT… Bring Back Boris?!?!

Boris defenders will say this move is designed to show just how weak Sunak is right now since the seat is all but going to fall to Labour. Can't say I agree with them but...

[Oryxslayer]

Can someone smarter than me do an idiots guide re the political geography of each seat?

Selby and Ainsty - The Conservatives will have won everything in 2019, but in the forthcoming by-election Labour will do best in Selby itself along with a few other forming mining villages nearby and on the western border of the constituency. Against that, the Tories will still do well in the wealthy rural parts of the constituency, especially in the Ainsty area which is very North Yorkshire.

Mid Bedfordshire - Hard to say really. Labour did well in a couple of wards bordering Hitchin while the Lib Dems are competitive in the wards near Bedford, but it’s otherwise really quite a homogenous constituency consisting of mostly well off villages and the Tories will have been far ahead at the last general election everywhere.

Uxbridge and South Ruislip - Labour are strongest in Yiewsley and Uxbridge itself (more working class and a modest number of students), Hillingdon is comfortably Conservative (but pretty representative so will probably be Labour at the by-election), while southern Ruislip is the most Conservative part (more middle class and noticeably whiter).

One thing to add is at least under the currently proposed boundary changes the Selby seat is going to get comparatively better for Labour through getting sucked in closer to Leeds. Obviously still a Tory seat in a national nailbiter, but straight two-party swings using current polling would see the new seat flip whereas the old seat would hold. So Labour have an incentive to push hard in that seat, even if picking it up won't be as easy as Uxbridge.

[Oryxslayer]

The other genre of safe (?) tory seats in this election may be Scotland: assuming the SNP has not recovered they may be too wounded to regain the borders seats/moray.

The fact both the SNP and Tories have taken a big hit makes it difficult to tell what will happen in their Scottish marginals. In both cases they’re largely losing to Labour but it will presumably be weaker in these seats (‘vote Labour, get the Tories’ or ‘we are the clear unionist choice here’). It really depends whose lost votes are more salvageable and whether there’s much direct switching between the Tories and SNP in places where there has obviously been a lot in the past.

The Tories weirdly enough could gain seats in Scotland,  but we really won't know what's going on there until YouGov does a MRP or we get detailed subregional data at the minimum.  Everything depends on how much the core unionist vote of the past 7 years now sees itself as one camp under different banners.  The public information is there for unionist voters to easily know whose which party can win which seats. Though said info is also readily available for Nationalists, and their behavior may vary by opponent as well. We really just don't know till it's election time.

[Oryxslayer]

What is the last time a constituency with Selby & Ainsty's borders would have gone Labour? 1997?

I mean Labour did win the Selby constituency in 97 and hold it in marginal contests until 2010. But of course there is a big asterisk there because the old seat did not go northwest towards Harrogate, it went north up to the borders of York Central since York Outer did not yet exist. Today of course that is a much more Labour favored alignment,  but I wouldn't be surprised if someone with better local knowledge said the York suburbs were once just as conservative as the rural turf. If not, Labour probably wouldn't have won the present alignment. 


Labour maintained a strong presence inside Selby town locally, and when the unitary authority shook things up, Selby was one of two areas Labour did well in. The other important thing is the seat is nationally getting better for Labour in 2024, losing Deep Blue Yorkshire voters and gaining wards in the SW greater Leeds area where things are less than overwhelmingly conservative.

[Oryxslayer]

Does anyone think the Tories will win any of the seats on Thursday?

They are fairly far in the hole when it comes to expectations in all three, which shouldn't be surprising given polling.

Weirdly though, I think it would be S&F which would be the hold if they were to hold any. Selby is the type of place where Labour support is seemingly highly fluid, which in this moment means a massive swing. London meanwhile has fiercer partisans, but the type of voters who have swung are those who are responding firmly and confidently to polls of their Labour support. So a smaller but more durable swing in Uxbridge.

Meanwhile S&F has less eyes on it, and while the Lib-Dem swing can at times be massive, they can also at times be underwhelming. But really nobody should bet against the Lib-Dem by-election machine.

[Oryxslayer]

Teale's preview of the 3 seats.

[Oryxslayer]

https://twitter.com/willglloyd/status/1682132674822000649?t=pA9uDcfobQ3vswEEyGsi...

[Oryxslayer]

Any hints of what's happening in Boris former seat?

Just announced turnout of 46.23%, or down 17.3% from the GE. ~31 to 32K votes.

Both parties are talking cautiously favorably, which is the usual By-Election lines when you aren't on track for a landslide like in S&F apparently.

[Oryxslayer]

Remember that it's still rather early and that rumours can still be deceptive at this stage.

Eventually we'll have pictures of vote stacks to make things obvious.

[Oryxslayer]

Turnout in S&F is 44.23%, or a decrease of 31.4% from the GE. 37 to 38K expected votes.

[Oryxslayer]

Turnout in Selby is 44.7%, which is down 27% on the GE. 35 to 36K votes expected.

Apparently a major party recount in Uxbridge.

Deceration in S&F is supposedly forthcoming soon, aka hopefully before 3 am.

[Oryxslayer]

Deceleration from Uxbridge & South Ruislip:

Lib-Dem: 526
Labour: 13,470
Ind Bell: 91
Ind  77 Joseph: 8
Let London Live indie: 101
Reclaim: 714
SDP: 248
Climate: 49
Green: 893
anti-Ulez ind: 208
Binface: 190
Rejoin EU: 105
raving looney: 102
Christian peoples: 78
No-ULEZ Ind 2: 186
UKIP: 61
Conservative: 13,965

[Oryxslayer]

Somerton & Frome Declaration:

Conservative: 10,179
Labour: 1,009
Lib-Dem: 21,187(!)
Greens: 3,944
Christian Peoples: 256
Reform UK: 1,303
Ind: 635
UKIP: 275

He wasn't kidding with that talk of needing a mega-Tractor.

[Oryxslayer]

Selby & Ainsty Declaration:

Conservative: 12,295
Green: 1,838
Labour: 16,456
Lib-Dem: 1,188
Yorkshire Party (Kinda): 1,503
Reform: 1,332
Heritage Party: 162
Raving Loony: 172
SDP: 314
Climate Party: 39
Ind Gray (AI): 99
Ind Kerr: 67
Ind Palmer: 342

35,856 total votes

And reminder this seat is getting measurably better for Labour in 2024, thanks to the redraw dropping rural conservative and new suburban developments in Ainsty and gaining some wards from Southwestern (Leeds) Yorkshire.

[Oryxslayer]

I don't understand how in the UK the liberal democrats can pull of astounding flips in by-elections then totaly choke and loose in general elections. Why can't they translate this success to something meaningful ?. Why can't they replicate their by-election machine in general elections ?

Because deep down the modern Lib-Dems are a localist party. In most areas they serve as an opposition to Conservatives when Labour can't win in said council, and the same in Safe Labour turf. Only a handful of areas are actually places where the voters are Lib-Dems first rather than anti-governing party.

This position in local politics means each local Lib-Dem branch must take local issues seriously. They thrive when you can send the candidate themselves around to knock on every door and make the voters feel recognized and their issues heard. And these issues differ from council to council, seat to seat, ward to ward, and there is only minimal pressure from national command to conform to any set platform. This is easily translatable to a by-election environment.

This is obviously different during a national campaign. The Lib-Dems have less resources than the Conservatives or Labour and start from a position where voters don't see them as a realistic option for PM (except maybe briefly during the 2010 campaign). They also put out a party platform on issues which almost always diverge from various local camps and the voters they won, a feature of the autonomous party organization rather than bug. The media will focus on the big national topics and general campaign trends, leaving no room for everyone to send a reporter to a single shire town like in a by-election. So the base is that much smaller. The Lib-Dems run focused campaigns on specific seats in GEs not because they are forced to, but because it reaps better rewards than a national tour.

That all said, a lot of the Lib-Dems truly 'party loyal' national seats tend to be Tory-LD rather than Lab-LD. A dominant Conservative party that got their people in Lib-Dem areas thanks to the coalition collapse in 2015 has kept the Lib-Dem seat count low. However, the situation right now is such that the Lib-Dems probably get at least 20 gains mostly off low-hanging fruit like Cheltenham or Winchester, even if the environment gets a bit better for Conservatives. This probably includes holds in whichever successor seats the Somerton and Tiverton incumbents decide to run in, based on what we have seen in the Eastern local elections and here tonight. But it may not include Chesham & Amersham (unless the incumbent jumps to Hertfordshire) cause the Lib-Dems have limited history in that region, and NIMBY issues are often forgotten in a national election. Which also perhaps applies to the Uxbridge result tonight: if Labour maintain their polling lead then they likely still gain it off the national issues which have no discussion space for neighborhood NIMBYism.

[Oryxslayer]

Some thoughts this morning:

My biggest concern is that the Uxbridge & South Ruislip result will embolden the increasingly noticeable anti-environmental tendency in the Tories, and furthermore that it'll make Labour (and even the Lib Dems to some extent) warier of doing anything which takes the car lobby on.

The issue with ULEZ is that most local governments are running on shoestring budgets. I personally foresee many problems with this type of policy,  and know there are many better solutions for environmental urban transformation policy, most using the carrot rather than the stick. However,  for there to be expansions of public transport resources for example,  there needs to be a lot of money which there supposedly isn't. It's hopefully something Starmer recognizes and changes, especially with Nandy on board.

But until that point, local government has to realize that doing a transformational policy without providing any way to facilitateit, aka telling the voters to figure it out with the situation as is, is always going to make people very angry. Projects similar to ULEZ caused a Tory councilor to be elected in a by-election in Cambridge city of all places, and saw the Greens get entirely wiped out in Yorks 2023 elections. If you can't use the carrot,  maybe you shouldn't use so obvious of a stick.

[Oryxslayer]

Uxbridge is actually a helpful outlier because the Tories will now obsess over a niche issue which never usually works well for them.

When unusual by-election results occur, it's usually a warning about a specific policy causing a lot of political pain.

George Galloway was a warning that Labour had specific trouble with foreign policy.

Conservatives lost in Richmond Park in 2016, and I saw it as a warning that Theresa May was going to have trouble with Brexit.

Labour losing Uxbridge is in my mind a similar warning that Labour will have trouble with green policies and would need to revise them.

At the very least Khan will have to ditch the ULEZ plans, because it clearly cost Labour the seat.

I think you're reading too much into a by election result. Yes ULEZ cost Labour a seat when the election was fought on ULEZ but the general election won't be fought on ULEZ.

A lot of by election gains are then lost at the following election because the niche circumstances that lead to the by election result no longer exist.

Also, turnout matters. 15-25pp extra turnout will make a huge difference in the general election.

It's completely plausible that Labour comfortably win Uxbridge next year even if the polls narrow.

So both winners in these elections are guaranteed to lose the next general election?

Some likely will, some seemingly won't if things remain as they are:

- It's been so long since the Hartlepool by-election that the conditions which flipped the seat Blue no longer exist. Labour essentially retook the council majority despite numerous handicaps in the locals. Even if polls narrow the seat is still likely to flip back red.

- The same Tory fundamentals are true for the Lib-Dems in Chesham and Amersham except the Lib-Dems are ascendant rather than falling. However, C&A doesn't exactly have a strong Lib-Dem local tradition, and the seat as it exists is seeing some changes through the remap. Not hard to imagine the Tories taking this one back. Also not hard to see Sarah Green run to somewhere where she could have better odds, be that neighboring Aylesbury; potential Lib-Dem targets in Oxfordshire, Surry, or Hertfordshire; or even all the way back to Brecon & Radnor in her native Wales.

- North Shropshire would be even harder to hold for the Lib-Dems versus a GE Conservative campaign, though its harder to see where Shropeshire local Helen Morgan would run to.

- The Lib-Dems probably couldn't hold Tiverton and Honiton in a GE environment, but they don't have to - the seat is split in two by the boundary redraw. The most Lib-Dem parts of the seat (Tiverton and her rural enviorns), both locally in in historical GE's, gets paired with rural Somerset where the Lib-Dems are surging. And Foord is from Somerset, so now he's a local to the new seat. So this is seemingly a hold.

- Wakefield is the type of seat Labour would be winning even if the polls are tied. Easy hold.

- Somerton and Frome is another seat getting split in two. But Sarah Dyke, is a local, just won a huge majority, and the Lib-Dems arn't exactly without past voters in Somerset. There are even seats more Lib-Dem locally in the region if she wants better odds of reelection. Probable hold.

- And Selby and Ainsty is a probably Labour hold if polls remain in their favor. The boundary changes notably favor them here, trading the most Tory parts to a new suburban seat, in exchange for some Leeds-facing wards Labour won in 2023. So even if polls narrow a bit, the incumbent still could hold.


And not all of the by-election holds this cycle will remain holds. Southend is one of the southern towns and cities where Labour is surging, the SNP are in turmoil and Airdrie and Shotts does not have a strong foundation when its Labour on the offense, and obviously the Tories ran a extremely local campaign in Uxbridge (similar to the standard Lib-Dem tactics) which doesn't exactly work in a national GE.

[Oryxslayer]

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.

OTOH, the other two unionist parties are irrelevant in this type of by-election,  whereas in a GE or Scottish election there is still value in casting a vote for them even though this seat is unwinnable.  There is the potential for extreme unionist tactical voting even when compared to the normal unionist tactical behavior, which is rising.

[Oryxslayer]

I’m being sent to Rutherglen, should be interesting - I’ve never campaigned in Scotland before.

This brings up an interesting possibility. The usual party strategy in a off-cycle contests is to flood the single seat with activists. Is there past evidence of differing doorstep reactions in Scotland (or other devolved areas) if its clear the activist isn't from said community? I know from experience some communities don't like outsiders 'preaching' to them, and sometimes they aren't the ones you expect.

[Oryxslayer]

Hah, the Liberal Democrats tweeted out the same point.

https://twitter.com/PGMcNamara/status/1688981633406226433

I mean if the polling stays similar to what it is, especially the Lab-Lib tactical voting that presently exists in this "oust the Tories" atmosphere, a Lib-Dem result that is below 35 is a utter disappointing failure. 40 might even be a better benchmark given all the low-hanging Tory fruit for the Lib-Dems in particular after 2019.

[Oryxslayer]

It is finally confirmed that there will be a by-election in Mid Bedfordshire.

[Oryxslayer]

Possible Tamworth by election if the honourable member Pincher resigns rather than facing a recall.

It is geographically a West Midlands seat but very Staffordshire in my mind! 19k majority but held by labour 97-05. The local election results were terrible for the Tories- one of their worst areas iirc in terms of just how much the bottom fell out.

The Tory problems in Tamworth almost all flow from Pincher, but he's been able to hang around so long that said problems won't easily go away. He's the difference between Tamworth's sweeping Labour local result and the positive but not crushing Labour results in say Cannock Chase and Reddich. And all of these areas are no longer among Labour’s immediate targets, even though they were won in 1997. Glancing over at the various models will find they all in normal circumstances would still stay Tory presently, partially cause of voter behavior since 97, partially cause the seats are geographically larger and now include rural turf.

Yet I'm fairly confident Labour will be holding Tamworth after the next GE, all cause of Pincher. The candidate selection conundrum is just another gift he has left the seat, one that will require a new candidate if a by-election is called.  The unique environments created by many past by-elections have benefited the challenger by more than they should have,  specifically because of the circumstances  surrounding the past incumbents departure. Yet another boon to Labour. And a by-election would help Labour more than just flipping the seat: getting a incumbent in place would again mess with the Tory selection and give them an easier time winning a seat that would hypothetically be a reach target if the polls slightly tightened.

[Oryxslayer]

Do we think that the Tories prefer Tamworth to coincide with Mid Beds or not? If it occurs in the same time frame, Labour will prioritize Tamworth,  putting pressure on the Lib-Dems in Bedfordshire to consolidate.  If Mid Bedford is it's own thing though, there remains a possibility of a 3-way spit facilitating a Tory hold.

[Oryxslayer]

Having to run a placeholder when you’re 20% behind in the polls, lost loads of seats in the council election and the resigning member did not speak for a year on account of a case that was so bad it brought down the prime minister?

Have there ever been worse circumstances for a by election? Perhaps they should consider having some sort of oil spill over the town centre

I mean anyone who doesn't start Labour as the favorites here would be lying. But it will be interesting to see just how much the incumbent's record hurts the Tories, as these things seemingly always do. You don't have to look that much to find all the weighted swing models that still suggest this seat will stay Blue. Even though we all know Labour will notably outperform polling if the By-Election were tomorrow, and then likely hold the seat now that they are the incumbents if the environment is the same at the 2024 GE.