I’m doing the by-election results for ALDC tonight, with the help of some strong painkillers. I had a bit of a fall yesterday and hurt my hip. Nothing serious, but it is sore.
Tonight’s results got the endorphins flowing though. Not one, not two, not three but FOUR gains.
One gain came in one of the Toriest parts of Oxfordshire, where we haven’t had a councillor for 15 years.
BY-ELECTION RESULT
Carterton TC, Shillbrook
Lib Dem 294
Con 139Lib Dem GAIN from Conservative
First win in Carterton for more than 20 years!
Congratulations to Cllr Natalie King pic.twitter.com/P8YYMq1kLL
— ALDC (@ALDC) January 20, 2022
BY-ELECTION RESULT
Dawlish TC, South West
Lib Dem 644
Con 486Lib Dem GAIN from Independent
Congratulations to Cllr Rachel Hardy pic.twitter.com/cLM4zS5KTW
— ALDC (@ALDC) January 20, 2022
And then came gain number 3:
BY-ELECTION RESULT
Burbage PC, Lash Hill
Lib Dem 433
Con 323Lib Dem GAIN from Independent
Congrats to Cllr Russell Turner! pic.twitter.com/bLfK1G9Nau
— ALDC (@ALDC) January 20, 2022
And number 4:
BY-ELECTION RESULT
Hatfield TC, South West
Lib Dem 268
Lab 126
Con 50
Ind 44Lib Dem GAIN from Lab
Congratulations to Cllr Tim Rowse! pic.twitter.com/QInvPu7rD8
— ALDC (@ALDC) January 20, 2022
You can’t win them all, but when you stand in a by-election, you keep our flame alive for another day. That is really important. So thank you to Manu and Alex for standing in a double by-election in Loughborough.
https://twitter.com/ALDC/status/1484311608616636419?s=20
There is one more result to come, from East Lothian, where our candidate is Ben Morse. That one is counting in the morning.
It’s been a good night. I’m covering next week as well. I hope we can keep this up…
* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings
Follow @libdemvoice.org on Bluesky
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
Lochee Park - 1973 #dundeewestend
Urgent action needed on Welsh rivers
Llandow, 1950: The worst air disaster the world had seen
Electoral Calculus's local election predictions
Are memories like a row of telegraph poles?
Nigel Jones
David Murray
tom arms
Simon R
5 Comments
All good news.
My Local Party is fighting a Kent County Council by-election in Willmington (north west Kent – near Dartford and easily accessible from London). The leader of the Lib Dem Group at KCC Antony Hook kindly came to help and says:
“the canvassing was incredible. 40-50% of the people I spoke to indicated there were definitely or probably going to vote LD. I am quite a cautious canvasser. I only put someone down as “probable” if they really are. They were seeing an energetic local campaign, which they are not used to seeing.
There was plenty of “I wasn’t sure but now you have called on me, I’ll vote for you”.
We need to get enough people there, to canvass or leaflet enough voters to stimulate enough people to vote to do it. We have a great candidate in Amanda Capell who lived in the area for 20 years and runs a local tutoring business. If we can get enough Lib Dems there we will win it.”
Please come and help. There is both leaflet delivery and canvassing available. Here are the details:
Saturday 22nd/ Sunday 23rd January: we have leafleting or canvassing available around Wilmington. Meet between 10.30 and 10.45 outside Wilmington Memorial Hall, 96 High Road, DA2 7DW. Afternoon sessions will also be available. Contact us at [email protected]
For details of times and venues next week, contact us by email.
We look forward to seeing you!
As Caron states, there was a further byelection result still to come in East Lothian to the East of Edinburgh. The result is now in :
Preston/Seton/Gosford Ward, East Lothian Council.
Labour hold. First preference votes :
Labour 1793 (38.5%)
SNP 1217 (26.1%)
Con 1154 (24.8%)
Green 231 (5.0%)
Lib Dem 136 (2.9%)
Ind. 122 (2.6%)
Interesting result from Scotland…about a 2% swing from SNP to Greens on the pro- independence side and about 3% swing from Labour to Tory on Unionist side. It is not often you see the SNP losing vote share in a local by-election. Meanwhile, while Labour may have held the seat, the party continues to loose support.
There were two other by-elections (in Selby and East Lindsey) which we didn’t bother to contest. Although the by-election wins in the parish/town councils are welcome one mustn’t read too much into them for reasons that Mark Pack has frequently stated.
Kevin Hawkins is right about town council results. That said, of course I don’t mean to rain on anyone’s parade – many congrats to Natalie and Rachel.
Can I also put in a plea here for ALDC to give percentages (and percentage increases) when reporting these results? It’s a terrific service to have the reports but it’s hard to assess the meaning of them without the context.
And to the local parties in Selby and East Lindsay, what a poor show. If any other local parties have a by election coming up and you’re thinking of sitting it out, PLEASE think again. There’s nothing more dispiriting for party activists and supporters on a Thursday night than seeing these total no-shows.