As with opinion polls, you can often tell more from council by-elections by looking at the pattern over several. There have now been four by-elections in London in 2008, so what is the picture so far?
There have been two Liberal Democrat holds with increased majorities (Fortune Green in Camden and Highgate in Haringey), one Liberal Democrat gain from Labour (Leyton in Waltham Forest) and one Conservative hold with a hugely cut majority over the Liberal Democrats (Cheam in Sutton).
All in all, a good picture for the Liberal Democrats with a net gain of one seat and vote increases in each contest: +13% in Leyton, +4% in Fortune Green, +4% in Cheam and +13% in Highgate.
The picture for the Conservatives is rather weak, with vote drops in three out of the four and certainly no sign of grassroots momentum building up ahead of May: -2% in Leyton, +2% in Fortune Green, -12% in Cheam and -2% in Highgate.
Labour too have seen their vote drop in three of the four contests: -14% in Leyton, -2% in Fortune Green, +1% in Cheam and -1% in Highgate.
The Greens have stood in three of the four, with their vote falling in all of them: -4% in Leyton, -4% in Fortune Green and -5% in Highgate.
Two more by-elections are due next week (in Harrow and Brent).
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Also those by-elections are in important constiteuncies for the Lib Dems. They must be pleased overall.
(In your understandable excitement you have put a glaring typo in the title, BTW)
Thanks Sam, I blame WordPress for only spell-checking the story itself…
I think the Harrow one next week may tell us more about the state of the parties in weaker areas for the Lib Dems – like Chiswick before Christmas.
Marlborough is a ward that the Lib Dems have held previously, although Labour has always been strong there.
Leyton and Cheam had special factors that harmed the defending party. Highgate shows the Lib Dems maintaining our level of support in a constituency we hold, and Fortune Green in one we are targeting.
Brian Paddick may suffer from ward nationalism though. I suffered from it in Mid Beds in 1997.
Mid Beds = the ward campaigners working nothing like as hard for an election bigger than the ward.
Two of these are in councils we are running which is particularly positive as these are areas we can often to badly in and something which seems more marked in London looking at the last two sets of elections.
In Brent the result was a majority of 391 in a ward where last time the gap between the third Liberal Democrat and the top Labour candidate was only 43.
Queen’s Park, Brent
LD 1,242 (47%)
Lab 851 (32%)
Con 292 (11%)
Green 239 (9%)
This is another London by-election where the Green vote fell sharply.
On the other side of the Brent and Harrow GLA seat the Lib Dems moved into second in Harrow with the Tories in Third