Another day over, here at Liberal Democrat Voice, and a fascinating one it has been too.
There is good news to report from Arun, in Sussex, courtesy of Cllr Jamie Bennett;
#LibDem destroy a 1000 Tory majority to take the #Arun district Aldwick east seat in today’s by election for the first time @libdemnews
— Cllr. Jamie Bennett (@JamieBen120689) March 15, 2013
To put the result in perspective, a Conservative majority of nearly 1,000 was overturned, with Liberal Democrats up from 16% to 34%. Congratulations to our successful candidate, Paul Wells, and all of the team in Aldwick East.
Elsewhere, Liberal Democrat proposals for press regulation have been published on the Party website. We’ll have more coverage of that over the weekend and early next week.
And finally, in keeping with my occasional attempts to bring culture to the masses, here’s a little something that I’d like to dedicate to our site’s resident Eurosceptic…
Good night, may your deity of choice be kind to you or, if you’re not into deities, have a lovely weekend…
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4 Comments
“To put the result in perspective, a Conservative majority of nearly 1,000 was overturned, with Liberal Democrats up from 16% to 34%. Congratulations to our successful candidate, Paul Wells, and all of the team in Aldwick East.”
We’ll, sort of.According to the Bognor Regis Observer ” Mr Wells received 383 votes, closely followed by Conservative Bill Smee, who had 357 votes. UKIP’s Janet Taylor gained 339 votes, while Labour candidate Richard Dawson received 61 votes.
Good performance, but the story should also mention that UKIP split the ‘Tory’ vote.
I would also mention that in Camden’s Gospel Oak ward, our vote collapsed. I’m not sure whether that was through lack of campaigning or whatever, but against Labour we still have a real problem, particularly in London and the big cities of the North.
@RC. Yesterdays results prompted me to have a look at all the relevant contests in the last 6 weeks. I found 13 elections where it was possible to make a reasonable comparison & there was no obvious difference between the way we performed against Labour & Tory opponents, our vote seemed equally likely to go up or down in both groups.
Over all 13 contests our vote went up by an average 1% (Wooo!)
That fits with the idea that we hit bottom last summer & have made a small recovery since, a case for cautious optimism.
paulbarker
I too have looked at the results and if there is anything to be read into them, which is actually not really possible in my view, it is that in a split Tory/UKIP vote is very important to the LD in the South. If that is maintained into the May elections then the results may seem quite good – the danger is that the GE leads to a different dynamic which is difficult to assess two years away.
In Labour held areas I am with RC, the LD protest vote is falling away and although this may cost the LD some seats, Jo Swinson amongst them, in urban and Northern areas the main victims would be the Tories in Tory/Lab marginals
I would not read too much into these elections and the conclusions you draw are not robust