UK By-elections thread, 2021-

[YL]

Has/Will there be any polling in any of the by-elections because the results would be interesting.

By-election polls are fairly rare and don't have the best reputation (constituency level sampling being hard) but I suppose someone might commission one.  The Lib Dems actually commissioned some constituency polls themselves before the last General Election, presumably to get some numbers for bar charts, so I suppose they might.  (But they didn't in Chesham & Amersham.)

There was a lib dem internal poll that showed them in striking distance in Chesham & Amersham. Might have helped them consolidate the non-tory vote.
https://www.cityam.com/exclusive-polling-puts-lib-dems-four-points-behind-tories-in-chesham-and-amersham-by-election/

I don't really count leaked internals, but indeed they did.  (There was another one earlier which had a larger Tory lead.)  I don't think we know when the polling for the Con 45 LD 41 one was done, but if it really was a proper poll and as close to the election date as implied in the article it was, well, not very accurate.

The ones they did before the last General Election were released properly and were done by Survation.  They also weren't very good, for various reasons.

[YL]

Someone keeps posting rubbish about betting odds for North Shropshire by election on Twitter and it turns out they’re a former Lib Dem MP. Just embarrassing

I assume you mean Matthew Green, former MP for Ludlow and one of two people to ever be a Lib Dem MP for a Shropshire constituency.  If so he seems to have moved on from betting odds, maybe because the Lib Dems now think they've convinced people that they're the challengers.  He's using the phrase "the Tory from Birmingham" a lot.

BTW betting odds haven't been great at predicting the last two by-elections.  They had the Tories clear favourites in Batley & Spen, and while it was close enough that that wasn't a terrible reflection, they had them at something like 16 to 1 on the day before Chesham & Amersham, and still clear favourites after polls had closed.

[YL]

Some Tory jitters/expectation management (*) coming out of Old Bexley & Sidcup:
https://twitter.com/breeallegretti/status/1465824002069479426

(*) delete as appropriate

[YL]

https://twitter.com/electpoliticsuk/status/1465813823814836230?ref_src=twsrc%5Et...

Fake news, a clued-in LD activist I know says no postal votes had been opened when that was posted.

If the numbers are real, the claim is that they're from canvassing of postal voters, not opening of postal votes.  There is also a claim that the numbers coming out of Chesham & Amersham were better for the Tories at the same point in the campaign.

I suspect the numbers are real, but without knowing more about how they were obtained it's not clear what to make of them.  On the face of it they are pretty bad for the Tories: postal voters are likely to lean Tory, and by-election campaigns tend to develop momentum over time.  But if people who refuse to tell a Lib Dem how they are voting are simply excluded the picture could change a lot...

FWIW I suspect the Tories are in genuine trouble there, but we'll see.

[YL]

That said, I've seen some musings online that the Lib Dems only release this sort of data when they actually win by-elections, and you don't see this kind of ramping when they come short, i.e., they know more about their chances of winning than they let on and only message this strongly when they genuinely think they're going to win.

I've been around for long enough to know that this really isn't true - although it's possible that the last line there is. Quite a lot of hyped-up LibDem challenges in by-elections have amounted to a significant increase in support and yet still a clear defeat, while near-misses have been as common as spectacular victories. By-elections are strange things: sometimes it is very, very clear what is happening, but quite often all of the campaigns involved are blind to how things are going for everyone else.

I don't think any party really knows what's going on as well as some people think, in General Elections too.  (See both 2015 and 2017, in lots of constituencies.)  In Chesham & Amersham, I think the Lib Dems were taken by surprise by how easily they won, though I think at least some of them were quite confident they would win.  Meanwhile the Tory who briefed Laura Kuenssberg had even less idea what was going on, though some Tories who briefed other news organisations were worried.

On your last point, I imagine that a Lib Dem win would be quite dependent on some habitual Tory voters just not voting, or perhaps voting for another right-wing party as a protest, and the Lib Dems aren't likely to have a good idea of the extent of that.

[YL]

For Old Bexley & Sidcup one interesting thing will be to see how well Reform UK do.  They've put in a fair amount of effort, the seat is reasonably friendly to them demographically, and their leader is the candidate, so if they're going to be much more than just another party on the ballot paper getting a few percent they ought to be getting a decent vote.  I just have the feeling, though, that they've not really managed to establish their new brand (not that I'm in the target audience).

Can they get over 10%?

[YL]

My thoughts:

Tories: stayed above 50% and will probably not be too unhappy with that in the circumstances.
Labour: OK, but not stellar, result in hostile territory, though might have hoped for a little bit better given the squeeze on the Lib Dems.
Reform UK: not great; hard to see them being much more than a minor annoyance if they can't get more than 7% in a by-election in a seat like that.
Greens: at least their share went up.
Lib Dems: the result looks poor, but they fairly obviously didn't try and so probably aren't that bothered.
Others: not much to say; sadly no-one was beaten by the Loony.

[YL]

Why is there so much pro-Brexit sentiment in Old Bexley and Sidcup? I get the Brexit sentiment in "left behind" rust belt areas of the north etc... but what explains anyone in Greater London wanting Brexit when its so abundantly clear that if there is one place that will be (and has already been) devastated by Brexit, its London? Though I suppose some might ask that question to a certain former mayor of London...

I don't know the area at all but my understanding is that it really thinks of itself as Kent rather than London.  Regardless of that, demographics generally give a better indication of how places voted than region (at least within England outside Liverpool) and Old Bexley & Sidcup has a noticeably low proportion of graduates for a middle class constituency.  Other constituencies in the London area and elsewhere with this pattern of low deprivation but also lowish education levels also voted strongly Leave; Rayleigh & Wickford, the Essex constituency which thinks that Mark François is a sensible person to represent it in Parliament, is a particularly striking example.

[YL]

Not sure there’s anything more insufferable than watching Lib Dem’s and Labour activists argue over who is actually best suited to winning this by election.

Equally hilarious to see either side try to climb the high ground.

By default shouldn't the answer at this point always be Labour? The LibDems seem sad and dying at this point--like, even if they were to win, who cares? They're not the future

No.  It wasn't Labour in Chesham & Amersham, and I don't believe it's Labour here.  (And I don't believe the Labour Party does either, for the most part.  If they really believed those numbers that the campaign released earlier today senior Labour figures would be swarming all over the seat going for the last push to win it, but they're not.)

[YL]

Caveat as below, but the Lib Dems are now favourites with most bookies to win North Shropshire.

BTW betting odds haven't been great at predicting the last two by-elections.  They had the Tories clear favourites in Batley & Spen, and while it was close enough that that wasn't a terrible reflection, they had them at something like 16 to 1 on the day before Chesham & Amersham, and still clear favourites after polls had closed.

[YL]

I doubt the Liberal Democrats will die anytime soon, even if every LibDem MP is defeated hypothetically, they would still have a presence in local councils.

I guess it depends on your definition of "dead". For example, surely by any reasonable definition the continuation Liberal Party is "dead", but it does still exist and still elects a handful of councillors. The continuation SDP was even more "dead", having lost its last councillor, before it recently got a tiny breath of life when it was taken over by Brexit activists and even had an MEP in 2018-2019 (a defector from UKIP); is the party still alive?

Regardless, the Lib Dems are very clearly far more viable than either of those parties and continue to be quite alive in some parts of the country, if moribund in others. They were in much more dire straits in the early 1950s, kept alive only by the sentimentalism of random local Tory groups.

Agreed - the Lib Dems performance now is numerically close to that of Jo Grimond's tenure. It could go the way of 1970 (with the suburban Remain areas in London and the SE replacing the Celtic fringe), with a poor general election performance, but this is not a party that is dying, and one where any decline by the Tories from their 2019 result and local factors might nab them a few seats regardless of their own national image.

I guess it depends on your definition of "dead". For example, surely by any reasonable definition the continuation Liberal Party is "dead", but it does still exist and still elects a handful of councillors. The continuation SDP was even more "dead", having lost its last councillor, before it recently got a tiny breath of life when it was taken over by Brexit activists and even had an MEP in 2018-2019 (a defector from UKIP); is the party still alive?

Regardless, the Lib Dems are very clearly far more viable than either of those parties and continue to be quite alive in some parts of the country, if moribund in others. They were in much more dire straits in the early 1950s, kept alive only by the sentimentalism of random local Tory groups.

Can someone explain this ? Did the tories stand down candidates in certain consciences or something to keep the liberals alive?

Yes - I'm not 100% sure of the exact timelines in each local case, but in all but one seat in 1951 that the Liberals won, there was no Tory candidate. One of these, Bolton West, was a gain in fact, due to the Labour MP being involved in scandal.

There were local pacts in both Bolton and Huddersfield; in both cases the Liberals stood in West and the Tories in East.  I don't know why the Tories didn't stand in the Welsh constituencies but suspect the Liberals would have held Cardigan and Montgomery regardless.

[YL]

Steve Brine isn't on the Commissioner for Standards' list of current investigations.

I don't know whether any of those cases which are on the list are sufficiently serious to be likely to lead to recall petitions.

[YL]

LibDems have produced "canvass figures" from N Shropshire showing them just a point behind the Tories and Labour still in the teens. Not inconvenient, if you are in a cynical frame of mind.....

It's quite hard to get an impression of what's really going on there, isn't it?

History suggests that an unpopular Tory government facing a Liberal (Democrat) challenge in that sort of constituency in a by-election is likely to lose, but a lot of that history is a long time ago, hence the brackets round "Democrat".  I wouldn't think it's as bad a constituency for the Johnson Tories as Chesham & Amersham, but things are much worse for the Government now than they were then, and the circumstances around the by-election are worse too.  Balancing various thoughts out, my gut feeling is a fall in the Tory vote to around 40%.  Have the Lib Dems done enough to squeeze the Labour and Green vote to get above 40% themselves?  Maybe just about. 

As it happens, those thoughts are pretty much in line with the Lib Dems' claimed canvassing figurees...

[YL]

I guess the problem for the Lib Dems was that to squeeze the Labour and Green votes enough to have a chance they had to create the impression that they were winning, which isn't really compatible with expectation management.

That said, I think they might well win, in which case that won't matter.  We will see...

[YL]

Andrew Teale's preview (also covering various local council by-elections):
www.britainelects.com/2021/12/16/previewing-super-thursday-16-dec-2021/

[YL]

It may just be expectation management, but pessimistic noises are coming out of the Tory camp.

[YL]

Turnout 46.3%. Not bad for December in a pandemic.

[YL]

Claims of a “four figure majority” but I imagine not at the lowest end of that range or they wouldn’t be so confident yet.

[YL]

Could the swing rival Christchurch 1993?

[YL]

Majority 5925

[YL]

Could the swing rival Christchurch 1993?

Looks like 34.1%.  The Christchurch swing was 35.4%.  (No other Con to Lib Dem swings come close, even Newbury.)

Anyway, this whole by-election has been an entertaining Tory car crash from start to finish.

[YL]

A gentle reminder that the Tories did actually go on to win Christchurch in 1997 of all elections...

Yes, though that was the only one of their 1992-97 losses they regained, and I think most people will expect that they will regain North Shropshire next time.

The Lib Dems' (and Liberals before them) track record at holding by-election gains is mixed.  You get cases like Ryedale 1986 where they lost it at the next election and never really challenged again, but then there are also ones like Newbury 1993 and Isle of Ely 1973 which were held through several General Elections; perhaps most strikingly there's Berwick upon Tweed 1973 which Alan Beith very narrowly won and very narrowly held in 1974 (both, but especially October), but then held for over 40 years until his retirement in 2015, when the seat inevitably went back to the Tories.

[YL]

Can't see the new MP winning any oratory prizes soon, though.

Of course she would originally, when selected in 2019, have been little more than a paper candidate in a hopeless constituency.  I doubt she imagined she'd be an MP until some day in the last few weeks when it dawned on her that she had a chance.

[YL]

It would be interesting to see how he would go down in Hartlepool today.

[YL]

The writ for the Southend West by-election caused by the murder of Sir David Amess was moved yesterday and the by-election will be on 3 February.  Nominations close on Tuesday.

We know that Labour, the Lib Dems, the Greens and Reform UK aren't contesting this, but UKIP have announced a candidate, as have some new outfit called the "English Constitution Party", and far right activist Jayda Fransen is also supposedly standing.