UK By-elections thread, 2021-

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And as we know from Tony Blair in Beaconsfield, remember how no-hope byelections can be treated as practice runs for future luminaries.

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"Stop The Steal"! ;-)

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Labour have had the decency not to campaign in this seat beforehand to this news.

Other parties, who shall remain nameless, were widely reported to have campaigned when MPs have been on their deathbed in the past.

Well tbf Old Bexley and Sidcup is not a seat Labour have the remotest chance of winning or coming close to doing so. Campaigning before an MP had actually passed in a utter no hope seat like this one would just be terrible PR for no material gain. If it was a seat they could actually win I expect Labour would have been readying their campaign prior to the MP passing (likewise with the Tories), maybe they wouldn't have been as blatant about it as those certain other parties but they'd be preparing (as morbid as that sounds).

In a Blair-era circumstance, they'd have had a chance--though perhaps *not* in a byelection (let's say, if Ted Heath died in his latter days in office).

Right now, at most it'd be more a matter of opposition forces in mutual cancellation--that is, it's neither Labour enough, nor Lib Dem enough, nor (for the sake of argument) UKIP/Brexit enough for a byelection steal.  "Defeat" here would be the Tories with less than a majority (last in 2005, if barely) or reduced to marginality (2001, 1997).

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We need a nickname here
https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/1500086f-08e3-4f29-bc77-3d2a3c969d83

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It's always so funny to me what high-tension and high-stakes affairs British by-elections are, even if the stakes mostly tend to evaporate by the next GE. Most House special elections in the US are snoozers unless the seat was competitive to begin with (a few special cases like Conor Lamb aside), whereas with British by-elections there are constant wild swings, hilarious interpersonal drama and meme-tier campaigning chops, and often, because of the lack of residency requirements, the same revolving door of wackos eccentrics running for various minor parties over and over again up and down the island. The process is always comedy gold even when the actual result doesn't change much about the UK's political landscape.

Bill Bryson said that following by-election was in itself an eccentric quirk of the British that he never understood- they’re glorious affairs and have actually got a lot more dull. The ones in the 1980s and 1990s (and before) would have daily press conferences, packed public hall meetings and quite vicious scenes too.

And of course - EXIT POLLS!

(which weren't always terribly accurate, it has to be said)

Also, despite superficial appearances of culturally-defined Con/Lab binary, the UK electorate's got a "stealth elasticity" to it--much of that due to the enduring wild-card presence of the Lib Dems, as well as that of nationalists in Scotland/Wales and occasional UKIP/Brexit/Reform-lineage dissident-right affairs.  Whereas in the US, all you have for the most part is the Dems and the GOP, and a lot of the greater melodrama tends to be in the battles for party nomination than in the race itself (cf the NYC Mayoralty).

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I mean I get why but it's disturbing that literally every non-Tory candidate is a far-right asshole.

Even the Psych guy?

Well, look at it this way:  they're each so much into individual freedom and liberty, they feel they're invididually viable enough to be elected.  Like, the ballot-box equivalent of serial Tinder left-swipees...

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I mean I get why but it's disturbing that literally every non-Tory candidate is a far-right asshole.

Even the Psych guy?

Well, look at it this way:  they're each so much into individual freedom and liberty, they feel they're invididually viable enough to be elected.  Like, the ballot-box equivalent of serial Tinder left-swipees...

One of his few campaign planks is to appoint Tommy Robinson to the House of Lords.

Oh, okay; just looked him up.  More lower-case monster raving loony than upper-case...

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Notably, the Official Monster Raving Loony Party didn’t stand in Batley and Spen in 2016 either.

Yeah, to extend the Tinder left-swipee metaphor, this batch of lunatic-righters would be the equivalent of a bunch of single guys at a sex club (paying a premium because they're, well, single guys)...in the middle of a pandemic.

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No fringe left candidate is slightly surprising tbh.

Maybe it says something about the nature of the "fringe left", or just the nature of the fringe, these pandemic/post-Brexit days--like it's all being pushed to the "right" by proxy, even the George Galloway types.  Or maybe the 2022-model fringe right has scared the erstwhile fringe left straight, at least when it comes to running for political office...

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If the Old Bexley and Sidcup by election was being held right now. Would the conservatives be likely to loose it ?

Weird things can happen when a government is hideously unpopular, but that’s one of the safest Conservative seats in the country and Labour are the clear but distant challengers, so very probably not.

Had Ted Heath died in office prior to the '97 election, it could well have flipped Labour *then*.  But, that was then.

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So, let's say Reform UK are really on 9% as in the most recent YouGov poll.  How would we expect them to do in Chester?

It's not an obviously favourable constituency for them: fairly educated and professional and clearly Remain voting.  Even so, if they're doing that well nationally oughtn't they to be saving their deposit?

Probably. They’re taking pretty much exclusively from the Conservatives rather than Labour. Given the Conservatives got 38% last time with the Brexit Party standing, you’d expect 7-8%, accounting for the estimated 54% remain vote perhaps 6-7%. Another way of looking at it is that the Brexit Party got 2.5% against a 2% national vote, which assuming they had stood in every seat would have got them 4-5% nationally, suggesting they’ll get 4-6%. Of course, it’s all a big hypothetical given they’re probably not actually on 9% and a lost deposit looks the most likely outcome.

Unless there's a backlash to Sunak based on his being a "brown person", of course.  (*Unless*.  And given who tends to support these breakaway forces, well...)

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A pretty good result for Labour given the cause of the by-election.  And Lub Dems finally save their deposit in a by-election this Parliament which they don’t win.

Yeah, *that* is odd; usually they're tacticalized to oblivion in these no-hope-byelection situations.  Dead cat bounce from disgruntled Tories, or from disgruntled-at-the-previous-officeholder Labourites?  (Or both?)

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Seems to me the best explanation is that Labour was seen as an industrial party, and Chester was not so transformed by the industrial revolution even as it depended on the downstream effects of industry (similar to Blackpool, also Tory till 1997).

And it also had more of a "market town" cast--the northernmost carryover of the Shrewsburys and Ludlows and Leominsters and Herefords and Worcesters and Gloucesters further south.  So it felt oddly genteel and disconnected from the Merseyside industrial dynamic (more so than Blackpool, which even as a resort town was much more distinctly "North Country" in tenor than Brighton or Bournemouth).  And fittingly, Chester finally tipped into the Labour column when Labour itself became "Islington-genteel" under Blair...

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All other parties losing their deposit was not what quite a few predicted.

Well, it's byelection-style statistical noise in a constituency where there traditionally hasn't been much heft beyond LabCon.  And it also reflects a moment when the generic anti-LabCon vote has "spread out", as opposed to the old days of Lib Dem as a singular NOTA standby or the more recent oxygen-hogging by UKIP/Brexitty types of parties...   

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All true enough, but polls consistently have Greens and Reform doing decently. The former might hope for some votes from left wingers browned off with Starmer, the latter aren't exactly lacking in hacked off Tories as a pool to fish in right now. And tbh the demographics of this one are arguably a bit more exploitable by a populist right outfit than the previous two NW byelections in recent months were.

Part of the thing is that I'm sceptical of Reform UK's (and to extent also the Greens') higher polling figures.

Also I suspect that without much of a visible campaign the voters most susceptible to the populist right just won't have voted.

"Doing decently" strikes me as an over-projection of what's traditionally been a Euro-election dynamic.  But the splinter right has consistently underperformed the noise they *seem* to make on political social media; while re Green, think of them more as splitting the Lib Dem vote than anything...

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It might be worth noting that Mid Beds was Lib Dems 2nd and a bit under 1/4 of the vote in their '05/'10 highwater mark elections--though yeah, the '19 figure looks at least on the surface like a bridge-too-far benchmark (except that North Shropshire marked an even bolder leap-from-third than Mid Beds would be).  But somehow, the Lib Dems seem like an ideal default catchbasin for that local-independent streak, whatever their degree of actual local organization...

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Southend is one of the southern towns and cities where Labour is surging

I was not aware that this was a thing -- what's the deal?

There are quite a few places in urban southern England with fairly average demographics where Labour have really underperformed since the 80s onwards. Just as the Conservatives have benefitted from depolarisation in the #RedWall, Labour can do so in these places as well. There’s also some that would be trending Labour in absence of other political change, as they become more popular with younger commuters and similar things.

I don't think that really applies to Southend, where Labour has underperformed since there has been a Labour Party. Labour historically did badly in seaside towns until they broke through in 1997, but this didn't happen in Southend, mostly because the boundaries split Labour strength in the city centre between the two constituencies. The closest we've ever come to winning a seat in the city was in a 1980 by-election at the height of Thatcher's unpopularity.

Labour success in recent years seems mostly to be a consequence of it now behaving less as a seaside town and more as a peripheral urban centre to London.

Through, seaside towns seems to be moving. Brighton, Portsmouth (on the Westminster level), Bournemouth, Poole and, of course, Worthing.

And don't forget Blackpool in the North--until Blair, mostly solidly Tory.

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What's the lowest winning vote share in any seat, including general elections, since universal suffrage?

Belfast South in 2015 was won by the SDLP with only 24.5%. I’m sure someone else knows a lower figure somewhere.

That's the lowest Wikipedia's General Election records page knows about.

There's also the immortal Inverness, Nairn and Lochaber 1992 4-way supermarginal result (26.0 Lib Dem, 25.1 Lab, 24.7 SNP, 22.6 Con)

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Unskew the polls!

The reform vote looks too high and I really doubt G*** M***er tiny party is going to get 4%.

Especially with the Greens on just 2%.

Though the main party figures do look credible - the earlier survey had the Indy implausibly high.

Not necesseraly wrong then, through. It was right after the local elections (where he would have had an higher profile) and before the big party machines got on the ground.

Another possible reason for a high Reform: a shared (partial) name w/the Lib Dem candidate.

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My prediction, made this morning, is as follows:

54 LAB
33 CON
04 REF
03 LDM
03 GRN
03 OTH

Given Reform's electoral record so far, I've a measured skepticism about them outpolling even a tactically marginalized LDM/GRN.  Or certainly not at a 4% level...

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My prediction, made this morning, is as follows:

54 LAB
33 CON
04 REF
03 LDM
03 GRN
03 OTH

Given Reform's electoral record so far, I've a measured skepticism about them outpolling even a tactically marginalized LDM/GRN.  Or certainly not at a 4% level...

They did get 6% in Old Bexley & Sidcup and Tamworth is likely to be relatively favourable territory for them.  If I actually believed Reform UK's polling I'd be predicting them to get 10%.

As for the Lib Dems and Greens, there's no evidence that either party is taking much interest and it is not an obvious hotbed of natural support for them.  So in fact, once you factor in the inevitable squeeze, I suspect that 6% for the two combined is on the high side; in Uxbridge & South Ruislip the combined Green and Lib Dem total wouldn't have saved the deposit.

Though even OB&S is old hat by now; and it was also something of a "showcase race" for Reform UK.  Plus I realize that Lib Dem & Green are likely deposit-losers, but they're also likelier generic dead-cat-bouncers--though I could allow the for the possibility of "anti-Pincher Tory" dead-cat bouncing from the other end.  (And I did only say "measured skepticism", mainly because of how consistently Reform's underpolled expectations, as opposed to outright skepticism.)

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Given that I think they’re only going to get 4% in a by-election in a constituency that in 2010 gave UKIP 5% and in 2005 them and Veritas a combined 6%, when the bogus polls have had them as high as 10% in the last two months, I’m not quite sure how you’re interpreting that as some sort of prediction of great support.

Tamworth is the sort of seat where the Lib Dems do very poorly indeed and given the circumstances I don’t see why they and the Greens won’t be squeezed. But regardless the main point of my prediction was that I believe that Tamworth is going to see Labour win a clear victory, possibly in the range of a 20-point majority, whereas so many others are predicting that it’ll be narrow and the Conservatives may even keep the seat.

Actually, my point is more the reverse--that given the ballot-box reality Reform UK's been facing lately, *2%* to the Lib Dems/Greens' 3% could be a more realistic prospect than 4%.  So, a different shuffling of prospective sub-deposit shares.  (Sure, it might only be of interest to psephological magpies, but...)

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Well, mea culpa w/my earlier anticipation of underperformance for Reform UK.

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Absolutely thrashed the Lib Dem’s. Should kill them off across the country and force them to stick to a few dozen deeply Tory seats.

Actually, when it comes to Mid Beds, they may have had a point in spinning their effort as an "assist" in defeating the Tories.  That is, as a valid vote park for "never-Labour" disgruntled ex-Tory voters.  Or had they only offered a token effort a la Tamworth, Labour might have been *less* likely to win, rather than more...

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Incidentally, this would have been the weakest byelection mandate since...when?