2 days and counting until the Chichester District Council By Election for Rogate ward. Bring it on! pic.twitter.com/yCMElNjMJF
— Dr Kate O'Kelly (@kfbok) April 10, 2018
Many congratulations to Dr Kate O’Kelly and the team for a superb win in the Rogate by-election for Chichester District Council yesterday! This was the first time that the Lib Dems have contested this seat in eleven years, and my goodness what a stunning performance going from zero to 55.8% of the vote!
Rogate (Chichester) result:
LDEM: 55.8% (+55.8)
CON: 40.1% (-27.3)
LAB: 2.6% (+2.6)
GRN: 1.5% (-18.2)LDem GAIN from Con.
No UKIP (-12.9) as prev.
— Britain Elects (@britainelects) April 12, 2018
Congratulations @kfbok on winning Rogate in Chichester on a massive 41% swing from the Tories 😀 pic.twitter.com/89jh66WN0g
— ALDC (@ALDC) April 12, 2018
Well done also to Mark Allen for standing and receiving 34.1% of the vote in Middleton Cheney ward, South Northamptonshire. Mark was the first Lib Dem to stand in the ward since it was created in 1976! Congratulations to Mark and the team.
Middleton Cheney (South Northamptonshire) result:
CON: 42.1% (-21.6)
LDEM: 34.1% (+34.1)
LAB: 19.7% (+19.7)
GRN: 4.1% (+4.1)Conservative HOLD.
No Ind (-36.2) as prev.
— Britain Elects (@britainelects) April 12, 2018
Congratulations to Helen Korfanty for standing in St Olaves ward, St Edmundsbury Council – the first Lib Demto do so since the creation of the ward 2003.
St Olaves (St Edmundsbury) result:
LAB: 58.6% (+27.0)
CON: 24.1% (-6.5)
IND: 12.4% (+12.4)
LDEM: 5.0% (+5.0)Labour HOLD.
No Ind (-37.8) as prev.
— Britain Elects (@britainelects) April 12, 2018
Well done to all the local teams in yesterday’s by-elections! They just go to show how important it is to fly the Lib Dem flag!
Here is ALDC’s calculation of the overall Lib Dem performance in all three by-elections yesterday:
From tonight's by-elections:
Overall share of vote compared to last time
Con 36.6 -16.0
Lab 24.2 +12.7
LD 33.7 +28.9
UKIP 0.0 -3.2
Ind 3.3 -24.6
Green 2.1 +2.1— ALDC (@ALDC) April 12, 2018
* Paul Walter is a Liberal Democrat activist and member of the Liberal Democrat Voice team. He blogs at Liberal Burblings.
17 Comments
Believe Dr O Reilly won the County seat last year or am I wrong.
Kate is already a star performer for her local community and the Lib Dems on West Sussex County Council, and that has reflected in her stunning victory to get onto the Chichester District. We should all wish her well.
Promising signs. The real crunch will come in May. Just one criticism – why can’t you publish the actual votes cast and the turnout rather than just the percentage?
Congratulations to all 3 Teams for standing, especially in Northamptonshire where no Liberal had stood since at least the mid 1970s (is that a record ?).
The results of the last Month seem to be back in line with the steady improvement we were showing from last Summer to February, giving us reasonable hope for May.
Very uplifting news! Is there a site purely for Lib Dems where we can get a bit more analysis of work done, paper candidate etc, as well as our history of standing?
@John Mariott The @britainelects twitter feed doesn’t usually produce them, unfortunately. The Rogate result is here: http://www.chichester.gov.uk/article/29520/By-Election-for-Rogate-District-Ward . Dr O’Kelly got 444 votes, on a turnout of 40%.
These are results in numbers of votes cast.
Chichester Rogate – Con 319, Lab 21, LDm 444, Grn 12
St Edmundsbury St Olave’s – Con 150, Lab 365, LDm 31, Ind 77
South Northamptonshire Middleton Cheney – Con 391, Lab 183, LDm 316, Grn 38
Mark Allen in Middleton Cheney, Northants has been heavily involved in campaign to keep open the local library. So campaigning a local issue as well as a Lib Dem traditional issue; Education and libraries. His leaflet states he joined the Party and started to get involved in campaigning because of EU referendum result.
From politistatsuk twitter feed today:
In 2018, there have been 76 council by-elections. Here are the results.
PARTY: SEATS; VOTE SHARE
CON: 35 (-5); 38.2% (+0.8)
LAB: 16 (=); 28.6% (+5.8)
LDM: 13 (+8); 16.3% (+7.0)
SNP: 3 (=); 4.2% (+1.4)
UKIP: 0 (-2); 1.3% (-8.3)
GRN: 1 (+1); 4.0% (-2.8)
OTH: 8 (-2); 7.4% (-3.6)
They have other good stats and graphs too: https://twitter.com/PolitiStatsUK
Theakes, You appear to be correct. Last year Dr O’Kelly won the Midhurst division with 1263 votes 35.7% (49 more than the Con). Turnout was similar at 42% of an electorate over four times the size of Rogate ward.
The Conservative candidate in Chichester doesn’t have a very good record against Lib Dems – having lost his seat on Portsmouth City Council to the Lib Dems 16 years ago!
A bit like Gerry Malone who lost the Glasgow Hillhead parliamentary by-election to Roy Jenkins and then Winchester to the Lib Dems (just!) in 1997 – we need more such Conservative candidates!
Daniel Walker, Donald Smith, Tony H , John Payne and Hibernian Liberal thank you all.
These results can only be understood properly with the information you have provided. Would it not be possible to include such information in the original articles every Friday, so that they are more meaningful?
Christopher Clayton – your suggestion will be heard by the editors I’m sure. But I would urge anyone to check out this website every Thursday: http://britainelects.com/2018/04/11/previews-12-apr-2018/ This guy devotes his time every week to producing a detailed preview of every single by election. I’m not sure quite how he does it but it’s a brilliant service. Informative and entertaining, and best of all he never shows any bias!
@Christopher Clayton: We are a small volunteer team with day jobs so often these articles are produced very late at night or early in the morning with the figures we have at the time.
When ALDC does its by-election report, it usually has more information in it as it’s produced later in the day.
If anyone wants to volunteer to produce by-election previews for us, we would be very grateful.
What Caron said really. ALDC has a paid member of staff who devotes a large portion of their job (at least one day a week) to by-election results, reports and analysis.
Britain elects has pretty detailed previews of by-elections done by Andrew Teale eg – http://britainelects.com/2018/04/11/previews-12-apr-2018/ – and PB.com usually has a post of full results.
(Maybe I should just read the post above as well! – Sorry @TonyH!)
I did not intend to sound carpingly critical of the LDV postings- I understand time constraints, hence my late reply! Thanks for the pointers for further information from TonyH and OnceaLibDem – very interesting stuff to be found there!