Local By -elections, November 30th, 2017

[yellowperil]

As nobody else has, I will create a thread for this week's by-elections and will hope I've done all the work required from me- but if necessary I can put up the four ( bit easier this week) lots of candidates and past stats if nobody else does so today.

[yellowperil]

I'll put this one up anyway as the one I'm closest to ( In more senses than one)
Maidstone BC North Ward
Conservative resigned
4 candidates:
Maureen Cleator (Lab)
Derek Eagle (Green)
Rob Field (Lib Dem)
Cheryl Jeanette Taylor-Maggio (Con)

Election results 2002: LD 1020/974/841, Con 402/390,Lab 226, UKIP 109
Election results 2003: LD 849,Con 379, Lab 161, UKIP 65
Election results 2004: LD 997,Con 486, UKIP 214, Lab 169,Green 80
Election results 2005: LD 849, Con 379, Lab 161, UKIP 65
Election results 2006: LD 1077, Con 530, Green 141, Lab 129
Election results 2007: LD 973, Con 500, Green 145, Lab 106, Ind 71
Election results 2008: LD 1012, Con 552, Green 141
Election results 2010: LD 1978, Con 1225, Lab 299,UKIP 194, Green 104
Election results 2011: LD 871, Con 782, Lab 330, UKIP 152 , Green 140
Election results 2012: LD 907, Con 381, Lab 206, UKIP 167 
Election results 2014: LD 949/597, UKIP 529/479, Con 380/334, Lab 206, Green 199
Election results 2015: Con 1255, LD 1230, UKIP 783, Lab 465,Green 215
Election results 2016: LD 851, Con 473, UKIP  328,  Lab 261, Green 68

[evergreenadam]

A Lib Dem gain from Conservative in Maidstone, in what is normally a Lib Dem held ward, would make them the largest party on the Borough Council.

[mboy]

Even if the UKIP vote goes entirely Tory, the seat should still go gold. Make it so!

[andrewteale]

Here are the other three:

Westway
Tandridge council, Surrey
Resignation of Caroline Warner (LD)

Lucy McNally (Lab)
Helen Rujbally (LD)
Alex Standen (C)
Helena Windsor (UKIP)

May 2016 result LD 416 C 335 UKIP 220 Lab 183
May 2014 result C 358 LD 265 UKIP 243 Lab 155


Bridgemary North
Gosport council, Hampshire
Death of Jill Wright (Lab)

Richard Dickson (C)
James Fox (Lab)
Stephen Hammond (LD)

May 2016 result Lab 796 C 310
May 2014 result Lab 829 C 331


Torrington
Torridge council, Devon
Resignation of Roger Darch (Ind elected as UKIP)

Sue Clarke (Grn)
Cheryl Cottle-Hunkin (LD)
Di Davey (Ind)
Harold Martin (C)
John Pitts (UKIP)

May 2015 result Ind 986 Grn 901/627 UKIP 841/659 C 786/736 Lab 496

[Pete Whitehead]

Nov 26, 2017 22:32:37 GMT andrewteale said:

Torrington
Torridge council, Devon
Resignation of Roger Darch (Ind elected as UKIP)

Sue Clarke (Grn)
Cheryl Cottle-Hunkin (LD)
Di Davey (Ind)
Harold Martin (C)
John Pitts (UKIP)

May 2015 result Ind 986 Grn 901/627/496 UKIP 841/659 C 786/736

An unusual Green/UKIP marginal (then anyway _ i'd guess probably not now)

But surely the 496 votes was for a Labour candidate, not a third Green as is implied here?

[greenhert]

No, Pete Whitehead, it was definitely for a Green. Labour stood no candidates in this ward, or in most wards of Torridge in 2015 for that matter. They only elected a councillor in Bideford South because neither the Conservatives nor the Liberal Democrats put up a full slate for it whereas Labour did.

www.andrewteale.me.uk/leap/results/2015/177/

[andrewteale]

Nov 27, 2017 0:01:25 GMT Pete Whitehead said:

Nov 26, 2017 22:32:37 GMT andrewteale said:

Torrington
Torridge council, Devon
Resignation of Roger Darch (Ind elected as UKIP)

Sue Clarke (Grn)
Cheryl Cottle-Hunkin (LD)
Di Davey (Ind)
Harold Martin (C)
John Pitts (UKIP)

May 2015 result Ind 986 Grn 901/627/496 UKIP 841/659 C 786/736

An unusual Green/UKIP marginal (then anyway _ i'd guess probably not now)

But surely the 496 votes was for a Labour candidate, not a third Green as is implied here?

You're quite right, and that was a LEAP error. I have corrected LEAP and will correct the above post.

[Pete Whitehead]

Nov 27, 2017 0:06:26 GMT greenhert said:

No, Pete Whitehead, it was definitely for a Green. Labour stood no candidates in this ward, or in most wards of Torridge in 2015 for that matter. They only elected a councillor in Bideford South because neither the Conservatives nor the Liberal Democrats put up a full slate for it whereas Labour did.

www.andrewteale.me.uk/leap/results/2015/177/

It might be more sensible to go back to original source material in a case like this

www.torridge.gov.uk/CHttpHandler.ashx?id=15285&p=0

[middleenglander]

Without wishing to steal Andrew's Preview thunder or set a precedent in commenting each week, the four by-elections this week have some interesting characteristics.

Gosport, Bridgemary North (2 member) - Labour elected in every elections from 2002 to 2016.

Maidstone, Maidstone North (3 member) - Liberal Democrat elected in every election from 2002 to 2016 except in 2015,
where the Councillor resigning caused the by-election.
Thomas Long was the second Liberal Democrat elected in the 2014 "double" election but polled 597 against 957 for his running mate,
before narrowly losing the 2015 election

Tandridge, Westway (2 member) - a Labour seat from 1976 to 1998 apart from 1978 and 1992 when won by a Conservative.
New boundaries in 2000 saw electorate fall from 2,990 to 2,395 but is now some 3,400
Conservatives won 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2010 and 2014 with a Liberal Democrat in 2008, 2012 and 2016.

Torridge, Torrington (3 member, all out elections every 4 years)
2003 - Independent Margaret Brown, another Independent and Liberal Democrat
2007 - Independent Margaret Brown, Conservative and Liberal Democrat
2011 - all three Councillors re-elected, the Conservative topping the poll
2013 - Green elected following resignation of Liberal Democrat; had stood also as Green in 2003 and 2007
2015 - Independent Margaret Brown, Green and UKIP
Both the Conservative and UKIP by-election candidates were unsuccessful in the 2015 ward elections.

[yellowperil]

I am delighted to see a real cooperative effort going on to get the information right for this particularly interesting set of elections. Thank you Andrew, and thanks too to Pete and to Middleenglander. Had I got round to Torrington before Andrew (which I might well have done except for the usual sort of domestic crisis I tend to suffer) I would have almost certainly followed LEAP and like others here trusted it implicitly.Only Andrew can concede a rare LEAP error.

[sirbenjamin]

I'm not particularly confident we'll win Westway - the Lib Dem machine is quite effective at picking up tactical Labour votes round here.

This ward is peripheral Caterham-on-the-Hill. Loads of relatively recent build nondescript boxy houses. Quite poorly connected, despite being adjacent to the Greater London border.

I can't be bothered to get involved with campaigning, and don't know an awful lot about our candidate. (The sitting Tory for this split ward is very good though).

Narrow LD hold on a low turnout, I suspect.

[Pete Whitehead]

Nov 27, 2017 14:15:46 GMT sirbenjamin said:

I'm not particularly confident we'll win Westway - the Lib Dem machine is quite effective at picking up tactical Labour votes round here.

This ward is peripheral Caterham-on-the-Hill. Loads of relatively recent build nondescript boxy houses. Quite poorly connected, despite being adjacent to the Greater London border.

I can't be bothered to get involved with campaigning, and don't know an awful lot about our candidate. (The sitting Tory for this split ward is very good though).

Narrow LD hold on a low turnout, I suspect.

What's the story with Westway's quite long earlier history of voting Labour do you know? It's a pretty ordinary looking area but not particularly council-estatey or anything like that (and in Surrey almost all the wards with a Labour voting history have a large proportion of social housing).

[sirbenjamin]

Nov 27, 2017 14:32:58 GMT Pete Whitehead said:

Nov 27, 2017 14:15:46 GMT sirbenjamin said:

I'm not particularly confident we'll win Westway - the Lib Dem machine is quite effective at picking up tactical Labour votes round here.

This ward is peripheral Caterham-on-the-Hill. Loads of relatively recent build nondescript boxy houses. Quite poorly connected, despite being adjacent to the Greater London border.

I can't be bothered to get involved with campaigning, and don't know an awful lot about our candidate. (The sitting Tory for this split ward is very good though).

Narrow LD hold on a low turnout, I suspect.

What's the story with Westway's quite long earlier history of voting Labour do you know? It's a pretty ordinary looking area but not particularly council-estatey or anything like that (and in Surrey almost all the wards with a Labour voting history have a large proportion of social housing).

Well I've only lived in Caterham since last year, and don't really know a huge amount about it.

Some of the private housing is very recent and the ward contains the only thing approaching a real 'council estate' in the area, which would've represented a greater proportion of the electorate 30-40 years ago - at a time before the LDs started to build their base and before right-to-buy. Maybe there was a strong personal vote for a local Labour councillor back in the day too? And the swell in support for Labour in the GE this year had to come from somewhere in East Surrey - I doubt it was in the villages in the rural parts of the seat.

All idle speculation on my part though.

I don't know why and how the now safe Labour ward where I grew up used to be Tory when I was a child either!

[Robert Waller]

I believe the ward includes the former Caterham barracks, now redeveloped as an 'urban village'.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caterham_Barracks
I'd be interested in the turnout figures before it closed in 1995, given the extremely low turnouts in 'army' wards such as in Aldershot.

That would be before the new estates were built, as well.
I don't know where the council estate (mentioned by Sir Benjamin) is.

[middleenglander]

Nov 27, 2017 22:30:16 GMT Robert Waller said:

I believe the ward includes the former Caterham barracks, now redeveloped as an 'urban village'.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caterham_Barracks
I'd be interested in the turnout figures before it closed in 1995, given the extremely low turnouts in 'army' wards such as in Aldershot.

That would be before the new estates were built, as well.
I don't know where the council estate (mentioned by Sir Benjamin) is.

Between 1976 and 1998 the turnout ranged between 40.0% (1988 & 1998) and 52.0% (1994) with an arithmetic mean of 45.9%.

[yellowperil]

I remember going on a council-organised tour of the redeveloped site round about 2000, I would guess (our own council was involved in redeveloping its own former military barracks site about the same time) . Can't remember being particularly impressed- it all felt a bit ,well, barrack -like

[Pete Whitehead]

Nov 27, 2017 22:30:16 GMT Robert Waller said:

I believe the ward includes the former Caterham barracks, now redeveloped as an 'urban village'.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caterham_Barracks
I'd be interested in the turnout figures before it closed in 1995, given the extremely low turnouts in 'army' wards such as in Aldershot.

That would be before the new estates were built, as well.
I don't know where the council estate (mentioned by Sir Benjamin) is.

I wondered about the barracks but as you say army voters are not renowned for voting in large numbers, let alone for Labour candidates. There was another institution in the ward which closed around the same time though, namely a mental hospital (there is still a hospital on the site). I wonder if this could provide a clue to the source of Labour voters - Shenley in Hertsmere used to be dominated by this kind of workforce and was also a safe Labour ward at that time. The hospital closed and the site became a large private housing estate turning the ward Conservative in the process

[mattb]

Nov 28, 2017 9:57:17 GMT Pete Whitehead said:

Nov 27, 2017 22:30:16 GMT Robert Waller said:

I believe the ward includes the former Caterham barracks, now redeveloped as an 'urban village'.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caterham_Barracks
I'd be interested in the turnout figures before it closed in 1995, given the extremely low turnouts in 'army' wards such as in Aldershot.

That would be before the new estates were built, as well.
I don't know where the council estate (mentioned by Sir Benjamin) is.

I wondered about the barracks but as you say army voters are not renowned for voting in large numbers, let alone for Labour candidates. There was another institution in the ward which closed around the same time though, namely a mental hospital (there is still a hospital on the site). I wonder if this could provide a clue to the source of Labour voters - Shenley in Hertsmere used to be dominated by this kind of workforce and was also a safe Labour ward at that time. The hospital closed and the site became a large private housing estate turning the ward Conservative in the process

Similarly Leavesden in Three Rivers, which also used to be reliably Labour (but now, on almost identical geographic boundaries as then, but the large asylum having closed and been replaced with private estates, has one of the lowest Labour shares around.)

[Deleted]

Nov 28, 2017 19:18:11 GMT mattb said:

Nov 28, 2017 9:57:17 GMT Pete Whitehead said:

I wondered about the barracks but as you say army voters are not renowned for voting in large numbers, let alone for Labour candidates. There was another institution in the ward which closed around the same time though, namely a mental hospital (there is still a hospital on the site). I wonder if this could provide a clue to the source of Labour voters - Shenley in Hertsmere used to be dominated by this kind of workforce and was also a safe Labour ward at that time. The hospital closed and the site became a large private housing estate turning the ward Conservative in the process

Similarly Leavesden in Three Rivers, which also used to be reliably Labour (but now, on almost identical geographic boundaries as then, but the large asylum having closed and been replaced with private estates, has one of the lowest Labour shares around.)

I guess shutting the asylum means that Labour were always going to struggle