UK parliamentary by-elections 2014

[joevsimp]

anyone else fancy a prediction

I'll go for:

Lab 50%  +/- 5% (probably +)
Con 20% +/- 3%
UKIP 20% +/- 3%
LD 10% or possibly less

Don't anticipate the Greens or BNP bothering, 2 or 3% apiece if they do

if TUSC stand again they will increase their vote to a mighty 0.75% and hail it as a great success

I have heard whispers that Class War might run a candidate, two local potential candidates have declined, and Ian Bone may or may not stand

[joevsimp]

According to the Guardian UKIP and the Lib Dems are wondering aloud whether the Tories spent more than allowed on their campaign.

I doubt they'd be so blatant as to spend more that £100,000 0n the campaign, but there were some similar mutterings at the last general election that money was spent on the council election tab that had an effect on the parliamentary campaign. Might be something similar with euro money being disproportionately spent  in Newark

of course i'm merely speculating on what the lib dems might be thinking, i'm sure that the tories didn't do anything illegal.  Sneaky and underhanded on the other hand...

[joevsimp]

South Cambridgeshire is a potential by-election; Andrew Lansley being widely associated with Britain's EC spot. Most of the area has been represented by the Tories since 1950. Lansley's majority is solid rather than large (13.3%) but that's over the LibDems.

not that I like making everything about UKIP, but what do we think? 20% second place?

Why does Cameron want to bump Lansley of all people off to Brussels? he's been doing such a good job at health.

[joevsimp]

I can't find the Euro election results though, which may be more helpful.

           Con   Lab   LD   UKIP Green Oth
2014   32.4   13.9   14.8   24.2     11.6   3.1

that's South Cambs district, which includes parts to the east that aren't in the constituency

not all wards were up in the local elections this year, but the lib dems held all of the ones that they were defending, UKIP only stood in one and got 16%

[joevsimp]

Edith of Wessex possibly? But I'm not actually sure.

Edith Swan-Neck? Wife of King Harold II (>>>------>0 that Harold)

[joevsimp]

do the tories even need to banjax the Lib Dems any more, surely they'd do much more proportional damage to labour if those were the kind of shenanigans they're willing to stoop to

anyway, Carswell won Harwich in 2005 with a majority of 900 votes, the boundary change for the 2010 election notionally increased that to 4,000, and then the election result was a 12,000 vote majority (with no UKIP candidate) so Labour being in the equation isn't completely out of the equation, However knowing Essex I'd be surprised if they manage to increase their vote share though

[joevsimp]

do the actually still get their nominal pound for that office?

[joevsimp]

according to this table posted on the local elections thread, the local results across the constituency (Heywood, not Clacton) was Lab 41, Ukip 25, Con 22, LD 10

I'd be very surprised if Ukip win this one but its not one that I think Labour are looking forward to

[joevsimp]

Supposedly, the next two candidates to defect are the MP's for Bournemouth West, and Basildon and Billericay. Apparently they've been spotted chatting to Farage in a pub, or something silly like that. Of course, the peril for UKIP is that the more Tory headbanger MP's they attract; the more tricky their much-vaunted "crossover support" for "disenchanted Labour" voters becomes.


The Mirror also had a "helpful" graphic of all the most likely Tories to defect based on how much they rebelled against party line. Seeing as Zac Goldsmith was fourth, they possibly should have established a less crude way to predict defectees...

where did they even get that from? according to this list Goldsmith is the 12th most rebellious tory
http://www.publicwhip.org.uk/mps.php?sort=rebellions
its not as if its not possible for someone adequately caffeinated to extract and collate the data from theyworkforyou on conservative MPs' voting record purely about Europe is it?

anyway, Basildon and Billericay is probably winnable for UKIP, either if the current MP defects or for whoever's up against him in May.  Bournmouth I don't know so much about but electionforecast.co.uk are predicting them 14%, not even overtaking the LibDems

[joevsimp]

oi oi, choose your next words about my native county, carefully...

although yes, I wouldn't be surprised if ukip went and won all of the seats around the essex coast, plus Harlow and Romford for good measure

[joevsimp]

Incidentally, Billericay's 90's era "maverick" MP Teresa Gorman is now a UKIP supporter. The Billericay constituency has seen some ... interesting characters in its time, so a UKIP defectee would be be par for the course.

I wonder if any ministers could fall to a surprise UKIP surge.

they've been making some interesting claims about Ed M's seat in Donny (can't remember if it's North or Central)

Eric Pickles is down the road in Brentwood, but I think that's one of the less likely seats in Essex to go mauve

IDS is in Tebbit's old seat, Chingford, where UKIP will most likely come a strong second but he's not going anywhere this time around

remembering how disastrous the LibDems decapitation strategy in 2001 was I'm not expecting anything like that, Ukip will be much better off targeting their most winnable seats regardless of who the MP is