14 Comments

• David Sparrow 12th Dec '25 - 9:17pm

  A good night overall with two encouraging gains in East Devon and The Highlands but why no candidate in South Kesteven where we were second with a solid 27% base last time?

• Simon Robinson 13th Dec '25 - 9:02am

  I was curious how Reform managed to win in West Lothian under STV, since the dislike the majority of people have for them ought to make it very difficult for them to get the >50% needed to win a single-member seat with STV. So I had a look at the details of the transfers. Turns out Reform got 32% of 1st preference votes – nowhere near enough. And they didn’t get many transfers – as I expected, relatively few people whose first preference is another party put Reform as a next choice. What pushed them to victory was that so many people didn’t use all their preferences, resulting in loads of votes dropping out as non-transferable – which in turn reduces how many votes you need to win: After transfers, Reform still only had 38% of votes, fractionally ahead of the SNP – but with so many votes having now been lost as non-transferable that was more than half of what was left.

  I also wonder if Reform may also have been helped by some unionists viewing the SNP as just as unpalatable as Reform, and therefore opting to vote Reform rather than allow the SNP in.

• David Raw 13th Dec '25 - 10:20am

  Simple, a collapse of the previous Labour vote in a traditional Labour area.

• Rif Winfield 13th Dec '25 - 10:36am

  One important aspect of these results (and others in recent weeks) has been the collapse of the Labour vote in many wards, including ones which they held previously or were in a good second place. Some of those votes may go to Greens, but LibDems should be targeting Labour voters everywhere. And look out for the likely annihilation of Labour in the May elections – with massive consequences for the present government and particularly for the Prime Minister. The Conservatives are also going to perform badly, although in some areas they may win seats from Labour even where they lose votes, simply because they will end up losing fewer votes than Labour. Reform will clearly be the big winners again this May, but as before LibDems may gain because they have proved better able to resist Reform than the establishment twosome.

• Geoff Reid 13th Dec '25 - 3:47pm

  Simon Robinson – Thank you for doing the sums. There are lessons here for how we deal with Reform in other places.

• Kevin Hawkins 13th Dec '25 - 4:34pm

  It is interesting that many voters in West Lothian were not using all of their preferences. Does anyone know what attitude Scottish parties take to using preferences. Do some parties encourage their supporters to “plump” for just one party in the mistaken belief that this helps them?

• paul barker 13th Dec '25 - 5:59pm

  Looking back at Kevin Hawkins work in averaging Votes, (see last week) we are already equal with Reform, both Parties taking a quarter of the Votes & Reform have been falling since late July. If that trend continues there is a good chance that Reform could come third next May. The battle for top place would be between us & The Tories, the downside of Reforms decline is that most of their Votes go to The Conservatives.

• Jenny Smith 13th Dec '25 - 6:10pm

  @Kevin Hawkins
  The information released by West Lothian Council about the by-election result reveals that 2157 out of 3675 voters gave a second preference but only 1336 gave a 3rd choice (and only 509 gave a 4th).

  Considering that only 22% of electors bothered to vote, I assume it was the most committed who voted, and they may be less likely to see good things about any party other than their own…

• Greg Hyde 13th Dec '25 - 9:15pm

  Paul; with Reform’s continued but steady decline of which you note – do you think they can hold onto those four seats come the next election ?

• Simon Robinson 13th Dec '25 - 11:15pm

  @Jenny Smith: I guess the impact of only 22% voting could go either way on 2nd etc. preferences. Yes, those are probably the most committed people, and it might be that they are more likely to refuse to vote for parties other than their own. But equally that commitment might make it more likely that they take an interest in 2nd and 3rd preferences and therefore make the effort to use those votes.

  At any rate, I think the lesson to be learned about beating Reform in STV elections is to communicate to voters the need to use their preferences: We ideally want voters to put LibDem as their first preference (or as high up their preferences as they are willing to put us), but also we want voters to make sure that – if it’s a no-hope seat for us – they cast one of their low preferences votes for an anti-Reform party that stands a chance of winning. Unfortunately that’s quite a complicated message to convey, so I’m not sure how we can communicate that 🙁

• paul barker 14th Dec '25 - 11:08am

  Greg, Individual Wards are subject to all sorts of local conditions , the 2 South Kesteven Seats No, but Darlington Yes, they are so far ahead. Scottish politics is different, there is an obvious route for tactical Voting but that means crossing the great divide, “Unionists” voting for The SNP. Plus the West Lothian seat has a big Independent vote, locals might know where they would go but I don’t.

• Peter Martin 14th Dec '25 - 11:48am

  “I think the lesson to be learned about beating Reform in STV elections is to communicate to voters the need to use their preferences”

  We are unlikely to have STV in UK elections any time soon; so there is also a need for those voters who don’t wish to see a Reform government to communicate their preferences to leaders of all political parties who might agree.

  This means forming electoral alliances to promote a single candidate to have a realistic chance against Reform, especially if they from their own alliance with the Tories. At present the left vote is splintered with competing candidates of from Labour, LibDem, Green, and the Nationalist Parties. We might soon have to add ‘Your party’ to the list even though it now looks like their impact will only be minor.

• Mick Taylor 14th Dec '25 - 1:01pm

  PeterMartin. This is a lesson the Greens must learn as their intervention and campaigning has allowed Reform to take two seats off the Lib Dems by margins significantly smaller than the Green vote. I know in one case they put out leaflets claiming they could beat reform only to ensure the Lib Dems lost.

• David Raw 15th Dec '25 - 9:34am

  @ Paul Barker “the West Lothian seat has a big Independent vote”……..

  Sorry, Paul, but 13.2% of a 22.2% turnout is not a “big Independent vote”. 77.8% of the electorate obviously decided that staying at home on a cold dark December day/night was the more attractive option.