UK parliamentary by-elections 2014

[Harry Hayfield]

Has a date been set for the by-election? As a precaution I shall be watching BBC North West Tonight from Monday onwards.

[Harry Hayfield]

Douglas Carswell MP (elected for the Clacton constituency in 2005) has announced this morning that not only is he defecting from the Conservatives to the United Kingdom Independence Party, but he will resigning his Westminster seat in order to fight the Clacton by-election as UKIP (which as you can imagine has taken a lot of people by surprise!)

Clacton
Douglas Carswell, Con    22867   53.02%
Ivan Henderson, Lab    10799   25.04%
Michael Green, Lib Dem     5577   12.93%
Jim Taylor, BNP     1975    4.57%
Terry Allen, Tendring     1078    2.49%
Chris Southall, Green      535    1.24%
Christopher Humphrey, Ind      292    0.67%
Conservative HOLD with a majority of 12,068 (28%) on a swing of 9% from Labour to Conservative

This by-election is the first defection by-election since Mitcham and Morden in 1982 and could well be timed to cause maximum chaos for the Conservative Party Conference (due towards the end of September)

[Harry Hayfield]

The latest rumours swirling around Westminster are:

Coalition MP's are being whipped to reject the writ being moved
Chancellor to oppose signing the stewardship document that allows an MP to resign
Writ to be moved so that the by-election happens during the Liberal Democrat conference

[Harry Hayfield]

Ladbrooks by-election odds:

1/3 UKIP
5/2 Cons
10/1 Lab
100/1 LD

I wonder who else in the Tory ranks would be tempted to break ranks if all hell breaks loose. Michael Fabricant? Owen Patterson? Nadine Dories? Peter Bone? Dan Hannan?

You mean Dan Hannan the MEP (who cannot force a by-election due to the method of his election)?

[Harry Hayfield]

Wouldn't shock me if they went for the Thursday of Labour conference. It'd nip any Labour bounce in the bud.

Unless Labour gained Clacton that is?

[Harry Hayfield]

Result in 2010
Mark Reckless (Con) 23,604 (49% +6% on notional 2005)
Teresa Murray (Lab) 13,651 (28% -13% on notional 2005)
Geoffrey Juby (Lib Dem) 7,800 (16% +4% on notional 2005)
Ron Sands (Eng Dems) 2,182 (5% +5% on notional 2005)
Simon Marchant (Green) 734 (2%, no candidate in 2005)
Conservative HOLD with a majority of 9,953 (21%) on a notional swing of 10% from Labour to Conservative

Medway Local Area Count Result : European Elections 2014
United Kingdom Independence Party 27,265 (42% +20% on 2009)
Conservatives 15,043 (23% -8% on 2009)
Labour 12,448 (19% +4% on 2009)
Green 3,684 (6% -2% on 2009)
Liberal Democrats 2,420 (4% -5% on 2009)
British National Party 761 (1% -7% on 2009)
Other Parties 3,480 (5% -3% on 2009)
UKIP GAIN from Con on a swing of 14% from Con to UKIP

[Harry Hayfield]

How similar is this seat to the Medway seat which Bob Marshall-Andrews narrowly held for Labour in 2005 (after conceding defeat)?  There must have been some changes if it was already notionally Tory, but it seems to have been very similar.

There haven't been any local elections to Medway council since 2011, and back then UKIP didn't have many candidates in the area, but that Euro result looks good for them.  (Anyone have any idea what the patterns are likely to be like within the council area?)

Trivia: Rochester is the only place in England to have lost city status.

According to UK-Elect (which takes the same data from the Press Association) the similarity is 15.10% (i.e nothing like the old Medway)