8 Comments

• tonyhill 25th Oct '13 - 5:25pm

  So we didn’t actually “gain” a seat then? (Not taking anything away from a very successful defence).

• paul barker 25th Oct '13 - 9:19pm

  The ALDC site lists 10 byelections for yesterday. The Libdem vote rose in 5 & fell in 3. Thats quite a good result surely, given the increased level of competition from UKIP.
  For comparison, The Labour vote rose in 4 of the contests & fell in 5.

• George Kendall 25th Oct '13 - 9:21pm

  @tonyhill
  We did gain a town council seat in Newton Abbot
  http://www.torquayheraldexpress.co.uk/Tories-lose-seat-following-election-Newton-Abbot/story-19988602-detail/story.html

• Chris 25th Oct '13 - 9:26pm

  “The ALDC site lists 10 byelections for yesterday. The Libdem vote rose in 5 & fell in 3. Thats quite a good result surely, given the increased level of competition from UKIP.”

  I believe all these seats were last contested in 2011-1013. Given that the party’s poll rating has been more or less static since late 2010 it’s not surprising that the percentage would rise and fall in similar numbers of seats. But probably all the results above except Havant would represent a substantial fall compared with pre-coalition levels.

• tonyhill 25th Oct '13 - 10:36pm

  George Kendall – yes, I know we gained a town council seat. But the article above says “The Lib Dems gained one seat at yesterday’s country, district and unitary byelections”, and that is not true.

• Peter Watson 25th Oct '13 - 11:38pm

  @paul barker “The Libdem vote rose in 5 & fell in 3.”
  Of the five byelections in which the vote rose, two were picking up 19 and 26 votes in seats which did not have a Lib Dem candidate before. Since that is little more than a friends and family vote, I suspect that you may be reading a little too much into it.

• Patrick Coleman 26th Oct '13 - 2:23am

  we did gain a Cirencester Town Council seat from the Conservatives as well on Thursday in a double vacancy by- election (in effect we gained 2 seats, as one vacancy was due to the resignation of a former LibDem-turned-independent councillor):
  Nigel Robbins Lib Dem 300
  Patrick Coleman Lib Dem 251
  Tory 207
  Labour 130.

  Cirencester TC is now 13 LD, 1 Con, 1 Ind

• Andy Boddington 26th Oct '13 - 8:12am

  Thanks for the comments. I’d be interested in your views on the way we report byelections.

  It is not my intention, as Lib Dem Voice Friday editor, to provide a full results service. We can leave that to ALDC and others. I want to highlight points of interest, wins, losses and exceptional performances. I always want to applaud those that have done well and won seats.

  It takes some time to check and compile the results – that can compete with pressure to get other articles posted. And also with the demands of my full time job as a writer and editor.

  So I’d prefer a ‘lite’ rather than a full fat publication of results. But without all the detail perhaps we are missing points – for example, sometimes a large swing is based on very few votes.

  In the back of my mind is whether we might develop a local results tracker that looks at trends over time. But I need to think about how best to do that. Perhaps you have some ideas.

  We also need to report town council results. I think these might best be encouraged in the comments thread. Again, your views would be appreciated.