Worst result for defending MP/party?

[timrollpickering]

What's the worst result ever secured by a sitting MP or defending party?

For the former one to beat is Mike Hancock getting 1.7% in Portsmouth South in 2015, albeit as an independent.

I suspect the latter may technically be another MP who left the party they were elected for and fought as another. But for parties elected the previous time, a starting point is the Ulster Unionist in Belfast North in 2001 got 12.0% and came in fourth place.

[Davıd Boothroyd]

Hancock narrowly 'beat' Simon Danczuk who got 1.8% in Rochdale in 2017.

There are some cases of comical results by former MPs who stood again as Independents after they were defeated. John Binns was Labour MP for Keighley, lost narrowly in 1970, and stood as an Independent in February 1974 only to fail to get 0.8% of the vote. Tom Iremonger lost Ilford North in October 1974 for the Conservatives, and then stood in the 1978 byelection as a "Conservative Independent Democrat": he got 1.5%.

[YL]

The UKIP candidate in Clacton in 2017 got 7.6%.

[mondialito]

The Lib Dem performance in Brent Central in 2015 was quite special.

[LDCaerdydd]

In terms of MPs sanding for re-election under the same banner:

Stephen Williams in Bristol West went from winning the seat with 48% / 26,593 votes in 2010 to 18.8% / 12,103 in 2015 and finished third.
Simon Wright in Norwich South went from winning the seat with 29.4% / 13,960 votes in 2010 to 13.6% / 6,607 in 2015 and finished fourth.

[timrollpickering]

Here's a new low for an MP and (possibly) for their party. Patrick Crumley was elected unopposed for the Irish Parliamentary Party in South Fermanagh in December 1910. At the 1918 election the seat was allocated to Sinn Féin in a pact but Crumley restood and got just 1.2% of the vote. I'm not sure if he was an official IPP candidate though.

[The Bishop]

Feb 20, 2018 13:34:05 GMT LDCaerdydd said:

In terms of MPs sanding for re-election under the same banner:

Stephen Williams in Bristol West went from winning the seat with 48% / 26,593 votes in 2010 to 18.8% / 12,103 in 2015 and finished third.
Simon Wright in Norwich South went from winning the seat with 29.4% / 13,960 votes in 2010 to 13.6% / 6,607 in 2015 and finished fourth.

Of course Williams stood again in 2017 and got just 7.3%.

[hullenedge]

Feb 20, 2018 12:46:08 GMT Davıd Boothroyd said:

Hancock narrowly 'beat' Simon Danczuk who got 1.8% in Rochdale in 2017.

There are some cases of comical results by former MPs who stood again as Independents after they were defeated. John Binns was Labour MP for Keighley, lost narrowly in 1970, and stood as an Independent in February 1974 only to fail to get 0.8% of the vote. Tom Iremonger lost Ilford North in October 1974 for the Conservatives, and then stood in the 1978 byelection as a "Conservative Independent Democrat": he got 1.5%.

John Binns was interviewed on Look North during the Feb campaign. He was expecting a decent vote.

[swanarcadian]

It's not terribly surprising if an MP defects and then loses badly under their new colours. 

Raymond Robertson in 1997 in Aberdeen South springs to mind, as well as Roy Beggs  Cecil Walker (whose vote declined from 21,478 to 4,904 in 2001).  Coming third or worse is perhaps psychologically worse than being beaten into second place - even if the swing is huge - as happened to most Scottish Labour MPs in 2015.  

[swanarcadian]

Feb 20, 2018 13:31:36 GMT mondialito said:

The Lib Dem performance in Brent Central in 2015 was quite special.

I wonder how exactly Sarah Teather would have fared if she had decided to go for another term. She would have undoubtedly lost, but not by such a margin. Few expected her to win in 2010 with the boundary changes there.

[mondialito]

Feb 20, 2018 19:09:56 GMT swanarcadian said:

Feb 20, 2018 13:31:36 GMT mondialito said:

The Lib Dem performance in Brent Central in 2015 was quite special.

I wonder how exactly Sarah Teather would have fared if she had decided to go for another term. She would have undoubtedly lost, but not by such a margin. Few expected her to win in 2010 with the boundary changes there.

That's my belief too. Perhaps instead of a Labour majority of 20,000 with Lib Dems 3rd, maybe it would have been a Labour majority of 10,000 with Lib Dems 2nd with the fall to 3rd happening in 2017.

[timrollpickering]

Feb 20, 2018 19:01:46 GMT swanarcadian said:

It's not terribly surprising if an MP defects and then loses badly under their new colours. 

Raymond Robertson in 1997 in Aberdeen South springs to mind, as well as Roy Beggs (whose vote declined from 21,478 to 4,904 in 2001).

Beggs was a defector but earlier in his career when as a councillor he switched from the DUP to the UUP before being elected to the Assembly or Westminster. I think you're thinking of Cecil Walker, who was the Belfast North MP who crashed from first to fourth place in 2001.

[swanarcadian]

Feb 20, 2018 20:04:16 GMT timrollpickering said:

Feb 20, 2018 19:01:46 GMT swanarcadian said:

It's not terribly surprising if an MP defects and then loses badly under their new colours. 

Raymond Robertson in 1997 in Aberdeen South springs to mind, as well as Roy Beggs (whose vote declined from 21,478 to 4,904 in 2001).

Beggs was a defector but earlier in his career when as a councillor he switched from the DUP to the UUP before being elected to the Assembly or Westminster. I think you're thinking of Cecil Walker, who was the Belfast North MP who crashed from first to fourth place in 2001.

Yes, precisely who I meant.

[Sibboleth]

India is the go-to place for this kind of thing. In 2014 the Congress incumbent for Shrawasti in Uttar Pradesh - Vinay Kumar Pandey - polled 2.1%. He had been elected in 2009 with 33.3%. Note no defection, same party label etc.

[andrewp]

Feb 20, 2018 20:10:54 GMT swanarcadian said:

Feb 20, 2018 20:04:16 GMT timrollpickering said:

Beggs was a defector but earlier in his career when as a councillor he switched from the DUP to the UUP before being elected to the Assembly or Westminster. I think you're thinking of Cecil Walker, who was the Belfast North MP who crashed from first to fourth place in 2001.

Yes, precisely who I meant.

In the context of 1997, Raymond Robertson’s result was not THAT bad. Yes he was 3rd but he was only 3920 behind Anne Begg. David Shaw lost Dover by 11700 for example.

[Foggy]

Feb 20, 2018 20:19:17 GMT Sibboleth said:

India is the go-to place for this kind of thing. In 2014 the Congress incumbent for Shrawasti in Uttar Pradesh - Vinay Kumar Pandey - polled 2.1%. He had been elected in 2009 with 33.3%. Note no defection, same party label etc.

That must be the biggest drop in raw votes too. He went down from 201,556 in 2009 to just 20,006 at the following election. 

[therealriga]

Northern Ireland offers up lots of such results due to changes in parties, pacts etc.

The UUP in North Down went from 72% in 1974 to 18.9% in 1979 due to their MP standing as an independent.

John Dunlop from 44.7% in Mid-Ulster in the 1979 General election to 2.8% in the Assembly election three years later (when he was still the sitting MP.)

Merthyr by-election 1934, the independent Labour party went from 69.4% to 9.8%. Decades later, the by-election victor S.O. Davies rebelled against his de-selection on age grounds and beat the official Labour candidate, whose share was 28.7% compared to the 74.5% for Labour the previous election.

The SDP managed 4.2% in Devonport in 1992, compared to David Owen's 42.3% in 1987.

[Sibboleth]

Feb 20, 2018 20:53:47 GMT Foggy said:

Feb 20, 2018 20:19:17 GMT Sibboleth said:

India is the go-to place for this kind of thing. In 2014 the Congress incumbent for Shrawasti in Uttar Pradesh - Vinay Kumar Pandey - polled 2.1%. He had been elected in 2009 with 33.3%. Note no defection, same party label etc.

That must be the biggest drop in raw votes too. He went down from 201,556 in 2009 to just 20,006 at the following election. 

An amusing special type of this sort of thing - it's a bit different because what's lost isn't genuine support - can be the drops that can occur when a party with a small vote bank gets doled out seats by a larger partner in an alliance because every vote helps and then goes it alone next election. E.g. in Tamil Nadu the Left Front were allied with the AIADMK in 2009 but on their own in 2014. They won two seats in the state in 2009. At Coimbatore, P.R. Natarajan of the CPI(M) polled 293,165 (35.6%) in 2009 and 34,197 (3.0%) in 2014, and at Tenkasi P. Lingam of the CPI polled 281,174 (37.7%) in 2009 and 23,528 (2.3%) in 2014.

[johnloony]

Feb 20, 2018 21:04:14 GMT therealriga said:

Northern Ireland offers up lots of such results due to changes in parties, pacts etc.

The UUP in North Down went from 72% in 1974 to 18.9% in 1979 due to their MP standing as an independent.

John Dunlop from 44.7% in Mid-Ulster in the 1979 General election to 2.8% in the Assembly election three years later (when he was still the sitting MP.)

Merthyr by-election 1934, the independent Labour party went from 69.4% to 9.8%. Decades later, the by-election victor S.O. Davies rebelled against his de-selection on age grounds and beat the official Labour candidate, whose share was 28.7% compared to the 74.5% for Labour the previous election.

The SDP managed 4.2% in Devonport in 1992, compared to David Owen's 42.3% in 1987.

That reminds me of the Conservative Party getting 32.0% in Down North in 1992 and then 2.1% in the by-election in 1995.

[warofdreams]

Two exceptional results for sitting MPs with the same affiliation:
* Edward Kenealy won a by-election in Stoke in 1875, as a much-hated independent, but at the next general election, in 1880, he took last place with 3.7%.
* Matthew Simm in Wallsend was elected for the NDP in 1918. By 1922, the party wasn't really operational, but he remained associated with its Parliamentary grouping to the election, in which he managed only 6.0% of the vote.

And two other dramatic drops in vote share:
* Jonathan Craik-Henderson won Leeds North East for the Conservatives in a 1940 by-election. Facing only Fascist opposition, he took 97.1% of the vote. But in 1945, he lost the seat to Labour, taking only 37.5%.
* The ILP won Glasgow Bridgeton in 1945, with 66.4% of the vote. By 1950, their MP had died, and his successor had defected to Labour. The new ILP candidate took only 5.8%.