Analysis of British local by-elections from 20/9/18

Readers, the results from British local by-elections from 20 September 2018 were as follows:

East Devon DC, Ottery St Mary Rural: Independent 755 (59.4%), Conservative 421 (33.1%, -10.9%), Liberal Democrat 51 (4.0%), Green 24 (1.9%), Labour 20 (1.6%). Independent gain from East Devon Independent Alliance, who did not contest the by-election.

Epsom & Ewell BC, Nonsuch: Residents' Association 766 (68.0%, +8.8%), Conservative 227 (20.2%, -5.2%), Liberal Democrats 92 (8.2%,-0.5%), Labour 41 (3.6%, -3.2%).

Luton UA, Limbury: Labour 692 (48.3%, -13.5%), Conservative 396 (27.7%, -10.5%), Liberal Democrats 344 (24.0%).

Suffolk Coastal DC, Wenhaston & Wettleston: Conservative 431 (50.6%, -2.6%), Liberal Democrats 340 (40.0%, +16.3%), Green 80 (9.4%).

Winchester DC, Upper Meon Valley: Conservative 1039 (51.6%, -15.2%), Liberal Democrats 905 (44.9%, +26.1%), Labour 39 (1.9%, -12.5%), Green 31 (1.5%). All changes are since 2016.

Wyre Forest BC, Bewdley & Rock: Conservative 734 (51.8%, +12.5%), Labour 489 (34.5%, +18.5%), Liberal Democrats 109 (7.7%), Green 85 (6.0%, +1.7%). All changes are since 2016. [Health Concern and UKIP did not stand]

In most of these by-elections, two-party battles of whatever type were the order of the day. Ottery St Mary Rural in East Devon and Upper Meon Valley in Winchester proved this more than anything else. In East Devon, the Independent tacitly supported by the East Devon Alliance (key supporters of Claire Wright, who has polled the most votes for any Independent parliamentary candidate in Britain outside Northern Ireland in the last two general elections) easily triumphed but it is clear that a heavy tactical squeeze on other parties' voters was a decisive factor in this Independent win. The same applied in Winchester where a Liberal Democrat win would have allowed them to wrest control of Winchester council from the Conservatives, which they only narrowly failed to do in May. The troubles around Brexit are affecting both the Conservative and Labour parties, with Labour divisions around Brexit becoming more apparent than ever, with Labour members recently voting to call their leadership to ask for at least a vote on the final Brexit deal, if not a second referendum on EU membership:

This is undoubtedly a key factor behind relatively even vote share drop for both Labour and the Conservatives in the safe Labour ward of Limbury due to a Liberal Democrat intervention, and Labour and the Conservatives both benefitting significantly from the absence of both UKIP and Health Concern candidates in Wyre Forest; however in Wyre Forest Health Concern voters were more supportive of Labour due to greater dissatisfaction at the Conservative government.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The English local elections of 2023-Conservatives pay the penalty for failing to put a stop to sleaze and sewage in our rivers

The English local elections of 2023 (Northern Ireland's elections will finish next week and a separate blog post will be devoted to these) not only resulted in more than 1000 Conservative losses just as Rallings & Thrasher and Sir John Curtice predicted, they also resulted in sweeping Green and Liberal Democrat gains across the nation-sending a hard message to the Conservatives about the need to protect our environment and Labour for barely acting like an opposition at all. The Conservatives in total made a net loss of 1,061 seats, with the vast majority being in the shire districts where they once dominated-even councils such as Bracknell Forest and Surrey Heath, which they held in 1995 and 2019, fell, to Labour and the Liberal Democrats respectively in those two cases. Who they lost to varied widely by the nature of the authority-their losses to Labour came mainly in (ex) industrial "Red Wall" areas where they had made against-the-trend gains in 2019 or fared better
Read more

My analysis of the Swedish general election of 2022

The Swedish general election of 2022 generated some surprising results, despite also averting pollsters' predictions significantly. The last three years in particular proved to be a rough ride for the Social Democrat led governments of Stefan Lofven and Magdalena Andersson respectively. Although Sweden's laxer approach to the COVID-19 pandemic (compared to most countries in Europe, which imposed lockdowns during much of 2020 and 2021, an approach that arguably caused more problems than it solved) proved effective, Mr Lofven's desire to lift the austerity tax (which only affected a wealthy minority, similar in nature to the wealth tax initiative of former French President Francois Hollande) and to join NATO proved contentious, with two of the Social Democrats' former coalition partners (the Swedish Greens and Swedish Left Party, who had both pulled out of confidence and supply) unsurprisingly voting against Swedish accession to NATO membership (all other parties in the R
Read more

On the 2020 Serbian election: Why a boycott will only worsen things there

First of all, I apologise for the recent hiatus; however elections are still postponed or on hold in many countries, including the UK. Serbia, however, was able to proceed with its 2020 general election amidst this crisis. Its overall result proved reminiscent of Hungarian elections under Viktor Orban's tenure (2010-present), since the leading national-conservative coalition, the SNS (Progressive Party of Serbia) coalition led by Serbian President Aleksander Vucic (Ana Brnabic is the Serbian Prime Minister, and the first woman and openly homosexual person to hold that position), polled 61.6% of the vote, giving them as many as 191 seats out of 250 and a majority of as high as 132, almost unheard of in any country with proportional representation. Press freedom has endured significant curbs since President Vucic first came into power as Serbian PM in 2012 (he became President of Serbia in 2017), as have civil liberties of Serbs in general. Nepotism and corruption in the Serbian
Read more