2023–24 by-elections thread

Scroll to see replies

Our next by-election is Rochdale on 29th February.

The Labour candidate has had the whip withdrawn and the Tories and Lib Dem's are going nowhere so it appears to be a 3 way run between Galloway, the now independent former Labour candidate or Reform.

Reply 161

SHallowvale

Original post by Rakas21

To be clear, it's not a 'cope' in the sense of defending the government. If we are seeing a notional majority in Wellingborough falling from 18,000 to ~6,000 then we are still on course for a significant loss and currently i personally expect a 9.5% swing from Con to Lab.

In terms of Con to Lab switchers we could actually model by those by looking at tables however one of the less talked of stories in recent months is that this has reduced and the last Youguv poll had this at 12% while it peaked at 21% a few months ago from memory (of the 2019 Tory vote), that's probably more a case of those 2019 anti Tories going from saying they'll vote Lab to say they'll vote Reform though rather than any great success on Sunak's part.

My point here is not that the Tories are not on course to lose but simply that a lot of the by-election seats they lost will probably vote Tory in the general election.

I could of course be wrong and i shall watch the election coverage avidly when it comes.

Well the issue is just with your reasoning. It relies entirely on the assumption that movement between parties is negligible, but we know this to be false. Reform, for example, got 2500 votes despite not running last time. Did they only pick up first time voters? Most likely not.

The recent YouGov poll shows only a 12% movement from the Conservatives to Labour, but if that happened to the 2019 vote then it would put the two parties nearly neck and neck on their national share of the vote. That also ignores the current projected 22% movement from the Conservatives to Reform, and the whopping 37% move from the Lib Dems to Labour.

I agree that probably one or two by elections won by Labour will return to the Conservatives. For example, I imagine that Mid Bedfordshire will return to the Conservatives because the margin Labour won with was very small. Overall? I think most of these seats will remain red.

But my comment about cope was only in jest, nothing personal. 😁