Good news from the West Country.
Kingsmead (Bath & North East Somerset) result:
LDEM: 41.1% (+10.0)
LAB: 24.6% (+11.6)
CON: 21.3% (-6.8)
GRN: 13.0% (-9.5)LDem GAIN from Con.
No UKIP (-5.3) as prev.
— Britain Elects (@britainelects) July 5, 2018
Congratulations to Cllr Sue Craig and her team.
It wasn’t a good night for the Conservatives as they lost a seat to Labour in Lichfield too – and we got 6.6% of the vote in a ward where we didn’t put up a candidate the last time.
Curborough (Lichfield) result:
LAB: 60.4% (+27.2)
CON: 33.0% (-8.4)
LDEM: 6.6% (+6.6)No UKIP (-25.4) as prev.
Labour GAIN from Conservative.
— Britain Elects (@britainelects) July 5, 2018
And we had a healthy gain in vote share in Shropshire:
Shifnal South & Cosford (Shropshire) result:
CON: 38.3% (-18.9)
IND (Mitchell): 22.2% (-9.3)
IND (Carey): 21.9% (+21.9)
LDEM: 17.7% (+6.3)Conservative HOLD.
— Britain Elects (@britainelects) July 5, 2018
That’s two weeks running when we have had a full slate of candidates in by-elections. It is so important that we give voters the chance to vote for us and you never know who might be inspired to join and get involved with us if we show that we are there.
* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings. You can find her on Bluesky at caronmlindsay.bsky.social
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13 Comments
I would also like to see us contest as many elections as possible. To put our performance in perspective we are currently contesting about 80% of local by-elections. Not as good as in the months before the coalition when we contested about 90% but much better than the low point of the coalition years when we contested only just over half of council by-elections. The Conservatives have the best record – they contest over 95% of by-elections. Labour in recent years have averaged over 90% – much better than they used to do. Obviously, contesting seats is not as important as winning them, but there is a rough correlation between contesting and winning – when parties are doing well in by-elections they also tend to be contesting more of them.
Erm, Bath and North East Somerset…
Remind me who the MP for North East Somerset is again…
Standing a paper candidate is not the same as contesting an election. There is no evidence whatsoever that electors remember whether or not a candidate stood last time.
Unless I missed it, there was no report of the two District Council by elections in the Lincoln area last week. They produced the usual result. The Lib Dem candidate came bottom (by a considerable margin) in both. Flying the flag.? At half mast?
Im sorry but the Bath result is a gain only in an unimportant technical sense. We were already the leading Party in the Ward so it makes more sense to see this as a hold. The apparently impressive swing was since 2015, our low point.
Overall our Byelection performance so far is in line with our results on May 3rd, dissapointing. That fits with our stable Membership & our average Polling which has been steady around 8% for the last 3 Months.
I am convinced that our Recovery will accelerate at some point, but not this week.
The Bath result is a very encouraging one. I accept that the Liberal Democrats did come 1st in votes in 2015 but Councillor Andrew Furse has a considerable personal vote (he took 967, his running mate 624). The 2015 results were Andrew Furse (LD) 967, Chris Pearce (Con) 872, Eric Lucas (Green) 696, 2nd Con: 680, 2nd Green: 625, 2nd Lib Dem: 624, LAB: 404, UKIP: 163. So in 2015 the second Lib Dem was joint 5th. The Lib Dems lost 2 seats in Dorset last year which had been down to a personal vote. Eric Lucas stood again for the Greens. A Green activist in Bath has posted on another site that the Lib Dems ran a ‘vote tactical’ campaign to send a message about Brexit and Teresa May’s cabinet’s incredibly competent handling of it and SO SO much else. Also this is a Bath based ward, from the Royal Crescent to Lower Weston. Congratulations to all working to achieve this result.
No mention in Voice of last weeks results, they were poor, at least not 3%, but it is the poor results that are important, they indicate little change between 2017 and now which means hundreds of lost deposits again. These results must pick up. This week: Curborough has a large Council estate area, it shows we have made no impression there, mind you the candidate came from Burntwood, not really local. In the Shifnal seat the candidate appears to have been from miles and miles away, the other side of Ludlow. I live nearer but not in Shropshire!. A local person may have got us up to 25%
Still struck in the doldrums.
PS Turnout at Lichfield was 15%, and such lovely weather too, guess most of the votes were postal, what a boring day for the Polling Station staff.
Looking at the results in the round, a fair night for the Lib Dems , a good night for Labour, a poor night for the Greens and a bad night for the Tories. I suspect if there hadn’t been a split between two Independents and the Lib Dems the the Tories would have even lost the seat they held.
Shifnal South & Cosford (Shropshire) result:
CON: 38.3% (-18.9) IND (Mitchell): 22.2% (-9.3)
IND (Carey): 21.9% (+21.9) LDEM: 17.7% (+6.3)
I keep asking this and never get an answer. Why don’t you report the proper results (numbers of votes) instead of just the percentages? There is all the difference in the world between a large urban or county seat and a tiny rural district ward. anyway the numbers are the facts, the percentages are derivatives.
There is something rather odd about the computed percentages & swings given for the Bath result. The increase in the LD % is easily related to the pubished results on the council’s own website. i.e. the total vote in 2015 compared with Thursday’s result is as stated but beyond that I’m baffled. Maybe one of our sephologists could shed light on the methods used to arrive at them. However, as usual, people are trying to infer too much from this very satisfactory outcome.
An average of the last 10 Opinion Polls puts us on 8.9%, thats the highest we have been (just) since I have been looking at this measure, since early May. We may be going up but I would really like more time to be sure or a Poll that above our current range of 6-11%.
Tony Greaves: Maybe it is because the complete results are not easily found until ALDC reports them later in the day or next day.