UK local by-elections 2011

[doktorb]

Walsall Council has scheduled a by-election for the 22nd December, Good luck getting turnout for that one.....

[Serenity Now]

A Tory councillor in Brighton & Hove has resigned their seat of Westbourne and there is rumour that there may possibly be a by-election before Christmas so I'll keep ya'll updated on that.. Even if the seat doesn't chance hands the result could be interesting given this is the only principal local authority with a (minority) Green-led administration. Results from earlier this year:

Tory: 39%
Labour: 29%   
Green: 25%
Lib Dem: 7%

[Leftbehind]

It should give an insight into how the Greens are holding up, in any case.

[DL]

Redcar would be a good test case of whether areas where the LibDems gained from Labour last year are truly shifting back to Labour in an avalanche of disatisfaction with the libDems being in coalition with the Tories.

[Leftbehind]

I think you've confused the context in which these were won - these were won in May this year, set against the backdrop of aforementioned significant Lib>Lab swings and ensuing heavy Liberal losses to Labour around the country.

Zetland, as far as I can see, isn't naturally a Labour seat - it was Con/Con in 2003, albeit with Labour only 3% behind (Con 41.3%, Lab 38.7%, Lib 20.0%), and then it was Con/Lab in 2007, with the introduction of an independent helping to make it ultra-marginal (Lab 28%, Con 27%, Lib 26%, Ind 19%).

This May's results were;

Lib 50.0% (+23.7%)
Lab 35.4% (+7.5%)
Con 14.6% (-12.3%)
[Ind18.9% (-18.9%)]

So, far from being a case of being a Labour seat opting for Liberal, it looks to me like Labour are a minority in this ward, and only won their seat in 2007's favourable four-way split.

I wouldn't be surprised if the Liberals extended their lead in this by-election.

[joevsimp]

A Tory councillor in Brighton & Hove has resigned their seat of Westbourne and there is rumour that there may possibly be a by-election before Christmas so I'll keep ya'll updated on that.. Even if the seat doesn't chance hands the result could be interesting given this is the only principal local authority with a (minority) Green-led administration. Results from earlier this year:

Tory: 39%
Labour: 29%   
Green: 25%
Lib Dem: 7%

If we compare that to Goldsmid back in 2009, the previous result there was....(top candidate for each party only)


Paul Lainchbury   C   1330   28.1%
Melanie Davis   Lab   1231   26.0%
Rob Jarrett           Grn   1010   21.3%
Bob Bailey           LD   720           15.2%
Anne Giebeler   BHI   314             6.6%
Gemma Furness   Ind   134             2.8%

so greens and labour both much further back, labour with more momentum than then and no disgraced outgoing tory, all to play for

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Presumably the Brighton Greens are having some sort of honeymoon period?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

SNP hold Hillhead, LDem hold Poulton, Labour gain Ruabon, Tories gain Sighthill, Tories gain Wight West. Most of these - weirdly - were extremely close, it seems.

[ObserverIE]

Glasgow, Hillhead

SNP 32.8 (+11.7)
Lab 30.2 (+4.7)
Green 13.9 (-4.7)
Con 11.9 (+1.7)
Lib Dem 9.8 (-8.5)
UKIP 1.1 (+1.1)
Britannica 0.4 (+0.4)

SNP	1026	1027	1030	1079	1174	1386
Lab	945	946	950	992	1057	1276
Green	435	436	441	556	639
Con	372	374	384	441
Lib Dem	307	310	301
UKIP	36	37
Britannica	11

Ribble Valley, Salthill

Con 34.0 (+4.6)
Lib Dem 33.4 (+9.2)
UKIP 26.0 (+5.7)
Lab 6.5 (-3.4)

Wrexham, Ruabon

Lab 34.2 (+10.3)
PC 34.1 (-9.7)
Ind 23.0 (-9.2)
Con 8.7 (+8.7)

Warrington, Poulton North (changes in italics in comparison with July by-election)

Lib Dem 44.7 (+5.5) (-3.6)
Lab 42.2 (-4.7) (+3.1)
Con 8.5 (-5.4) (+0.2)
UKIP 4.6 (+4.6) (+0.4)

Isle of Wight, West Wight

Con 76.7 (+30.2)
Lib Dem 13.9 (+13.9)
UKIP 9.4 (+9.4)

Redcar and Cleveland, Zetland

Lib Dem 47.0 (-3.0) (661, 633)
Lab 37.8 (+2.4) (531, 512)
Con 11.6 (-3.0)(217, 102)
UKIP 3.6 (+3.6) (50)

(via Britain Votes)

[doktorb]

Ruabon - Labour won by 1 vote
Salthill - Conservative won by 4 votes

[YL]

SNP hold Hillhead, LDem hold Poulton, Labour gain Ruabon, Tories gain Sighthill, Tories gain Wight West. Most of these - weirdly - were extremely close, it seems.

I'm sure that occasionally happens in afleitch's better dreams...

[joevsimp]

Walsall Council has scheduled a by-election for the 22nd December, Good luck getting turnout for that one.....

Wembley Central as well now, possibly Wrstbourne, Hove too.  Who is it who sets the dates for these?


I don't think that the student vote (or absence of it) will have much effect in any of these, but I agree its a stupid date for a byelection, is there even any council business over winterval?

[MaxQue]

Walsall Council has scheduled a by-election for the 22nd December, Good luck getting turnout for that one.....

Wembley Central as well now, possibly Wrstbourne, Hove too.  Who is it who sets the dates for these?


I don't think that the student vote (or absence of it) will have much effect in any of these, but I agree its a stupid date for a byelection, is there even any council business over winterval?

Winterval?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

SNP hold Hillhead, LDem hold Poulton, Labour gain Ruabon, Tories gain Sighthill, Tories gain Wight West. Most of these - weirdly - were extremely close, it seems.

I'm sure that occasionally happens in afleitch's better dreams...

loltiredness

[afleitch]

SNP hold Hillhead, LDem hold Poulton, Labour gain Ruabon, Tories gain Sighthill, Tories gain Wight West. Most of these - weirdly - were extremely close, it seems.

I'm sure that occasionally happens in afleitch's better dreams...

loltiredness

It was appreciated!

Hillhead was a 13.65% turnout; woeful. About a third of the electorate are students so there is alot of 'churn'. SNP doing well to top the poll here. Transfers are interesting. I've been trying to work out, using the recent by-elections in Scotland as a guide to work out what will happen with the inevitable Lib Dem collapse in an STV system.

In Glasgow in 2007 the Greens won 5 seats (on par with the Lib Dems) and the Tories just 1 as the Tories were transfer repellant. Indeed in Pollockshields, the Tories only won by 4 votes on the last count pipping the Greens.

Tranfers from the Lib Dems in te by election were 115 (38.2% to the Greens, 57 (18.9%) to the Conservatives, 49 (16.3%) to the SNP and 42 (14%) to Labour with 38 exhausted

In 2007 the Tories, right the way through to count 7 when they were eliminated only picked up 62 votes. Picking up 69 votes from transfers until elimination in this low turnout by-election is actually not bad; theres much more movement here from the Lib Dems to the Tories than there was in 2007. However, the Greens are in a very good position here, not only to win seats but also unfortunately, to knock the Tories out in Pollockshields (though they would be in a stronger position to win in Newlands/Auldburn as Labour's second candidate performed so poorly)

Of course the SNP undernominated in Glasgow which led to some curious results due to huge surplusses of SNP votes not having a second SNP candidate to go to. They won't be doing that this time round and a fight to the finish with Labour could end up freezing nearly all the other parties out almost exclusively in the 3 seaters.

[Chancellor of the Duchy of Little Lever and Darcy Lever]

Five by-elections on 24th November:

BEAVER, Ashford, Kent; caused by the death of Labour councillor Brendan Naughton.

One of the boom towns of modern Britain thanks to its location and good transport links, Ashford is an old market town which became a major railway junction in the nineteenth century.  It is now linked to London and the Channel Ports by the M20 motorway and the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, with high-speed trains taking just 37 minutes to reach St Pancras.

The growth of Ashford has meant the town has spilled outside its old boundaries to swallow up several surrounding villages, and Beaver ward (named after Beaver Lane), which was originally the south-west corner of the town, is now just part of the urban sprawl.

Beaver ward is a fairly working-class area and was safe Labour in 2003. Unusually it has been swinging towards the Conservatives ever since then, and in May the two Labour candidates were just 29 and 27 votes ahead of the Conservatives; the Ashford Independents, a well-organised localist group with five Ashford councillors, finished in a strong third place.  Shares of the vote in May were Lab 38.8 C 36.4 Ashford Ind 24.8.

Candidates for the by-election are the three main parties, the Ashford Independents and the Greens.  All the candidates are based in the town except for the Labour candidate, who is from the nearby town of Tenterden.


GREAT HORTON, Bradford; caused by the resignation of Labour councillor Rev Paul Flowers, who as well as being a Methodist minister is also the chairman of the Co-operative Bank.

This ward is south-west of the city centre just outside the ring road.  It's a heavily deprived area, particularly in the Lidget Green area at the northern end of the ward.  Perhaps connected with that, the ward has a large Asian population (19.3% Pakistani, 9.2% Indian according to the 2001 census).

These sort of factors make the ward prone to strange results, and there were some very strange results in Bradford when the ward was created in 2004 - the three seats in this ward split 2 Labour 1 Conservative, with huge differences in the votes of the Conservative and Labour candidates and allegations of electoral fraud thrown around.  The Conservative councillor was sent to prison in early 2006 in connection with a fatal hit-and-run accident in his taxi, and Labour gained his seat in a double-vacancy election that year.  Since then it has been plain sailing for Labour here as their vote has grown and the ward turned into a stronghold; in May shares of the vote were Lab 75.4 C 15.4 LD 9.2.

Candidates for the by-election are the three main parties, the Greens and UKIP.


HAZLEMERE SOUTH, Wycombe, Buckinghamshire; caused by the resignation of Conservative councillor Bob Bate after he posted a tweet comparing gay marriage to marriage with animals.

The village of Hazlemere is a suburb of High Wycombe, located just north-east of the town on the Amersham Road.  Southern Buckinghamshire has some of the UK's most expensive/unaffordable property, and all six of Hazlemere's census areas are in the 20% least deprived in England. 

This being southern Buckinghamshire, these demographics translate into a very safe Tory ward, which had a 28-point Tory lead in May this year (C 54.7 Ind 26.6 LD 18.7) and wasn't even contested in 2007.  Even in the adverse circumstances of this by-election the Tories should have no trouble holding on.


LAKENHAM, Norfolk; caused by the resignation of Liberal Democrat councillor Fiona Williamson, who is moving abroad.

Lakenham is a working-class ward within the city of Norwich, located at the south end of the city between the Ipswich Road and the River Yare.

The county council division has the same boundaries as the Norwich City Council ward of the same name, so the ward effectively goes to the polls each year.  During the Blair and Brown years it was a Lab/LD marginal ward, with Labour usually winning narrowly except in 2008 and at the last county council election in 2009 (LD 31.6 Lab 26.8 UKIP 15.7 C 13.2 Grn 12.7).  Labour started to pull away in the 2010 city council election (which was delayed until September because of a botched attempt to make the city a unitary council) and on this May's result (Lab 41.6 LD 21.3 Grn 18.5 C 11.8 UKIP 6.7) the ward now looks safe for them; not good for the Lib Dems who are defending this by-election and a city coucil seat next year, in a parliamentary seat they hold.  The Greens have beaten the Conservatives to third place in the ward at the last two elections.

The by-election features candidates from the three main parties, the Greens and UKIP.


WENDRON, Cornwall; caused by the death of Independent councillor Mike Clayton.

Wendron is a rural ward which essentially covers the countryside between Camborne and Helston.  The largest settlements in the ward are Wendron itself, Crowan and Sithney.

The ward, particularly around Wendron itself and Carnmellis, has a history of tin-mining going back for centuries, and the former Wheal Roots tin mine near Wendron is now a tourist attraction under the name of Poldark Mine, after the Poldark novels which were set in the general area.  Perhaps because of the long mining history, this is a fairly poor area. 

Local politics in this part of Cornwall tends to be dominated by independents, and in 2009 Wendron ward elected Mike Clayton, who had previously represented a smaller Wendron ward on Kerrier district council.  Clayton had a decent enough majority but won with less than a third of the vote, and the candidates placed second to fifth all polled over 10% (Ind 31.7 MK 19.9 C 15.5 UKIP 13.0 LD 10.0 Ind 6.9 Lab 3.0); runner-up was Loveday Jenkin of the Cornish nationalist party Mebyon Kernow, who had previously been a district councillor for the ward including Crowan.

Jenkin is standing again for Mebyon Kernow and is joined by the three main parties and independent candidate Phil Martin, who is a former district councillor for the ward including Sithney.

[doktorb]

     

[Leftbehind]

Beaver ward is a fairly working-class area and was safe Labour in 2003. Unusually it has been swinging towards the Conservatives ever since then, and in May the two Labour candidates were just 29 and 27 votes ahead of the Conservatives; the Ashford Independents, a well-organised localist group with five Ashford councillors, finished in a strong third place.  Shares of the vote in May were Lab 38.8 C 36.4 Ashford Ind 24.8.

Candidates for the by-election are the three main parties, the Ashford Independents and the Greens.  All the candidates are based in the town except for the Labour candidate, who is from the nearby town of Tenterden.

It looks like the safeness for Labour was exaggerated in 2003 by there being a straight Labour/Tory choice; the following elections which have introduced a third option - be it the Liberals or the Ashfield Independents - has seemed to hit the Labour vote. With the Greens entering, and the gap so narrow, could we be looking at a Con gain?

[ObserverIE]

Wycombe, Hazlemere South

Lib Dem 37.7 (+19.0)
UKIP 33.4 (+33.4) (candidate stood as Ind in May, getting 26.6)
Con 20.9 (-33.8 )
Lab 8.1 (+8.1)

Ashford, Beaver

Lab 37.5 (-1.3)
Con 27.8 (-8.6)
Lib Dem 19.3 (+19.3)
Ashford Ind 12.4 (-12.4)
Green 2.9 (+2.9)

Cornwall, Wendron

MK 36.4 (+16.5)
Lib Dem 22.3 (+12.3)
Con 19.4 (+3.9)
Ind 15.1 (-23.5)
Lab 6.8 (+3.8 )

Bradford, Great Horton

Lab 58.6 (-16.8 )
Con 20.7 (+5.3)
Lib Dem 9.9 (+0.7)
UKIP 8.6 (+8.6)
Green 2.1 (+2.1)

Norfolk, Lakenham (changes in italics since 2011 city council elections)

Lab 43.0 (+16.2) (+1.4)
Lib Dem 25.0 (-6.6) (+3.7)
Green 20.1 (+7.4) (+1.6)
Con 6.5 (-6.7) (-5.3)
UKIP 5.4 (-10.3) (-1.3)

(Update: All via the new BritainVotes site here.)

[YL]

Wycombe, Hazlemere South

Lib Dem 37.7 (+19.0)
UKIP 33.4 (+33.4) (candidate stood as Ind in May, getting 26.6)
Con 20.9 (-33.8 )
Lab 8.1 (+8.1)

The UKIP candidate's personal vote might explain their high vote, but what's the explanation for the Tory collapse?

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Good win for Mebyon Kernow there.

[Leftbehind]

Indeed.

Seems Ashford turned out to be a relatively safe hold for Labour - I didn't realise the Liberals were standing (who's absence appears to have bolstered the Tory/Independent vote this May to a point where they looked like challengers).

Ashford Ind 12.4 (-12.4)

They're Cornish nationalists as well?

[ObserverIE]

Indeed.

Seems Ashford turned out to be a relatively safe hold for Labour - I didn't realise the Liberals were standing (who's absence appears to have bolstered the Tory/Independent vote this May to a point where they looked like challengers).

Ashford Ind 12.4 (-12.4)

They're Cornish nationalists as well?

Find a nice colour tag in grey or ochre for MK and I will oblige

[Leftbehind]

Here's grey

More surprised at your colouring of the Ashford Independents than your Teale for MK - you usually leave them black.

[ObserverIE]

Here's grey

More surprised at your colouring of the Ashford Independents than your Teale for MK - you usually leave them black.

I'm assuming that they're a local party of sorts rather than a set of random independents and I usually use teal for those, beige being too hard to read. I'll just experiment with goldenrod... bingo.

Just trying something else... (that's fuchsia)... or this (orangered) for assorted non-Labour lefties...

[Leftbehind]

I see.

Seem to remember Respect being orangeyred. Never even heard of the colour Goldenrod before.