UK By-elections thread, 2021-

[somerandomth]

Any idea as to when the by-election will be held?

[somerandomth]

This will certainly be an interesting by-election to see exactly how much Labour can realistically recover in SNP-Lab marginals by the next election and how ed the SNP is without Sturgeon. I'm expecting a Labour gain with around a 5-10% majority, but it's very early on

[somerandomth]

Can one of our fine posters do a summary of the constituency?

Not an expert on the constituency, but the post on the constituency over on the vote2012 forum is useful I found

[somerandomth]

That's interesting. I'm of course comparing in my mind to the three Romney presidential campaigns, where it was definitely a factor, but there are a number of reasons I can imagine that would explain the difference.

Religion seems to play a far more understated role in British politics compared to America, it's often far less explicit and it's quite rare for a candidate's religion to have a large direct impact on votes (even if it may have indirect impacts through a candidate's views towards certain issues, e.g. Tim Farron)

[somerandomth]

Mid Beds may be one of the most outstanding Labour by-election wins in their history.

They shouldn't be winning there. It is as has been suggested, and seen in the local symbolic of the Tories 'respectable' rural loyal core vote being disengaged. Abandoned.

'What's Tory about the Tories anymore' should be a bigger discussion than it is.

This. It's not even that the Tories have catastrophically lost the voters they won in 2019 (they have) or the more median-y voter that generally decides election (they also have), but they're just fundamentally losing their core base as well. I'm just in awe at how badly they've ed up.

[somerandomth]

I think a lot of it stems from statistical/data illiteracy which is super bad among the general public and lots of people on twitter (looking at you, Corbynistas....)