The Voice’s Lib Dem sources are saying it is likely to be Conservative 45-50% range, Labour 25-30% and Liberal Democrats 15-20% range, which is in line with what’s been said elsewhere. Big Conservative win, massive drop in the Labour vote, Liberal Democrat vote little changed from the general election.
First verdicts: good news for the Conservatives, bad news for Labour as the defeat will be at the grimmest end of their predictions, and relief for Liberal Democrats that the London elections style two-party squeeze has been avoided.
UPDATE: We hear party is expecting about an 8% swing from Labour to Liberal Democrats. At a general election, such a swing would deliver around 20 gains.
ELECTORAL TRIVIA UPDATE: An 8% swing from Labour to the Liberal Democrats at the next general election would deliver Birmingham Hall Green as a Liberal Democrat gain. The current MP for Hall Green in Steve McCabe, the man in charge of Labour’s Crewe & Nantwich campaign.
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14 Comments
If that 8% swing is bourne out thats a sensationally good result….
Very big turnout at 58.2%
Well, let’s not get carried away – holding our vote from the general election is a credible result, but not much more.
That said, if our vote merely holds up while Labour’s collapses at the next GE it will hand us victory in some marginal Labour-held seats (Edinburgh South, Hampatead & Kilburn, Durham City) while making many, many others vulnerable to an intensive Lib Dem ground war.
If we work incredibly hard and fight for every inch of territory in our held seats vs. the Tories I could see us holding our own or winning a handful of net gains at the next election. If our vote had collapsed in Crewe I’d have to revise that prediction – that hasn’t happened by all accounts, which can only be good news.
Labour know it’s a very bad night for them:
1) Labour is represented by Chris Bryant MP.
2) The Labour agent is denying this was a safe Labour seat.
Bridget
PS 8% will do nicely 🙂
Yes, I should have mentioned Islington South and Finsbury 😀
Eric Pickles is saying Tory majority of around 6,000 based on box counts.
Nice touch – the BBC have dug up Vivian Bendall for the results programme, the last Tory to gain a Labour seat in a by-election.
8% swing Lab -> Lib? Now that’s not the standard calculation of swing, I’m sure, it usually involves parties in 1st and 2nd…!
“… relief for Liberal Democrats that the London elections style two-party squeeze has been avoided.”
Except of course your vote went down four points! Bad night for Lab and Lib.
@Kevin Davis: except, of course, that Lab/Con typically get squeezed a lot more than 4% when they’re in third place in a by-election.
Sorry, to spoil the election trivia fact: With boundary changes McCabe is not defending the new Hall Green constituency, Roger Godsiff has been selected for it. Instead, McCabe is taking on the new Selly Oak seat. Although after last night, thats not exactly going to be safe!
Spot on, although as usual the LibDEm aspiration is overstated.
If we overstate by enough then by the time it’s been ignored and watered down in the press, we might just about be treated fairly and seen for what we are.
It was a bad result for the Lib Dems, as it seemed we had a good candidate, lots of effort and our vote went down.
We need to start working out how we can do better otherwise we won’t do better.
In the euro elections last time we got 14% ? on the same day as we got 27% in the local elections – it’s awful and the party ought to be doing something to stop it happening again, instead we had the (to the public) incomprehensible we support a referendum, just not this one lunacy.