Eastleigh

[gwynthegriff]

Mar 1, 2013 11:19:14 GMT Richard Allen said:

Mar 1, 2013 5:54:32 GMT swanarcadian said:

A terrible result. You could say this result is UKIP's version of Roy Jenkins in Warrington in 1981. Could UKIP be doing to the Conservatives what the SDP did to Labour?
We'll see what the impact of this will be in national opinion polls but the chances of a Labour landslide under Ed Miliband just got stronger.

If Labour do win by a landslide in 2015 it will be no good blaming UKIP. The fault will lie with the Conservative Party that has abandoned and derided much of its own support base and proven to be utterly incompetent in government.

[/b]

And we all know that's the function of the Labour Party.

[xftrev]

Am I the only one to be amused by the hysteria of UKIP at this Jenkinsite second place? That the MP going to Westminster will actually be the most pro EU of the whole spectrum?

FPTP becomes completely dysfunctional when a 3 party system emerges - if it is to be 4, it will become a farce. The most likely outcome of a UKIP surge at the next election will be a left of centre, and overwhelmingly pro-EU form of government. Do people never look at recent history?

As for the actual result - despite the drop in vote, it is remarkable they held the seat given the circumstances. I can't think of a more difficult environment in which to fight a by election.

[Deleted]

Mar 1, 2013 12:05:42 GMT Arthur Figgis said:

I can't see how any of the three main parties can be remotely happy with the result as it was.


Labour - 0.2% increase in the vote compared to an election with plenty of anti-Labour tactical voting. Should have advanced purely on that basis, let alone by picking up any anti-government tactical voting.

I am not overly happy at all but this area like many is where we lost votes to LD tactical voting and I have to ask whether we need to unwind that, we can never win this seat as it stands.

As been suggested a much better test for us is in the likes of Pompey South. In the lcoal by elections we have seen two things

1) LD/Tory fights the LD';s have held up and increased their vote, IMHO this is due to being soft tory and appealing to those tories who not like real right toryism

2) LD/Tory or LD straight fights we have gained seats and votes

If this continues then the Tories simply can not get a majority and we can or a coalition with LD's

[Tony Otim]

Mar 1, 2013 12:16:23 GMT The Bishop said:

Amongst the minor parties, I note that TUSC had their now customary comedy score - only more so

And scarcely better for the EDs - they both managed to finish below the three different strains of loony-ism and the religious nutjobs.

[Deleted]

Mar 1, 2013 12:21:12 GMT xftrev said:

As for the actual result - despite the drop in vote, it is remarkable they held the seat given the circumstances. I can't think of a more difficult environment in which to fight a by election.

you do forget though the exceptional local election performance of the LD's and the fact they threw it all into it. I never forecast anything other than a LD win though closer to UKIP than I ever thought possible.

[Arthur Figgis]

Mar 1, 2013 12:21:12 GMT xftrev said:

FPTP becomes completely dysfunctional when a 3 party system emerges - if it is to be 4, it will become a farce. The most likely outcome of a UKIP surge at the next election will be a left of centre, and overwhelmingly pro-EU form of government.

Much like the current one, then?

[Deleted]

Ashcroft poll

Michael Crick @michaellcrick
Ashcroft poll: only 43% of UKIP voters in #Eastleigh yesterday said they'd vote UKIP at 2015 general election

Paul Waugh @paulwaugh
New Lord Ashcroft poll shows in Eastleigh: 22% of 2010 Conservatives switched to UKIP, as did 19% of 2010 Lib Dems

So ukippers had better think about it

[Pete Whitehead]

My estimation of how the wards may have gone based on local election results (2011 and 2012)


Relative to the local elections as opposed the the 2010 general election, the Conservative share is about steady while Lib Dems and Labour losing around a third of theirs. It does seem quite likely then that UKIP did best in Eastleigh town itself and Bishopstoke (but I would guess Thornton held his own ward of Bishopstoke West) with the LD lead coming from Hedge End and West End etc. I'd be interested from anyone on the ground (Khunanup) who might confirm or refute this theory

[Deleted]

stats.xlsx (20.95 KB)

Now I know some of my statistics don't mean very much but, all being well, the attached should at least provide some actual facts. For once

[Roger Harmer]

For me the big positive for the LDs (aside from winning the seat!) is that it shows that many Labour supporters, who voted tactically for the LDs in 2010 are still prepared to do so now. Their vote remained at the very depressed share of 2010 and while there must have been lots of moves in different directions, especially with UKIP doing so well, the assumption that the Labour tactical vote for the LDs would disappear in our held seats, now that we are in coalition with the Tories, clearly isn't true. This gives great heart for our defences against the Tories in 2015 - as indeed does the strong UKIP vote (I'm sure this will decline significantly come the GE but will be stronger than at 2010 and those that stick with UKIP will come more from the Tories than LD or Lab).

[Deleted]

From my telling the Kippers certainly took the Town. I think, and Pimp has called this one right, we won it due to the postals.

The kippers won on the day, that is my hunch.

[East Anglian Lefty]

The problem is that calculations about the winner on the day don't necessarily reflect who was most popular on the day itself, because the Lib Dems (and indeed the other parties) will have encouraged their most reliable supporters to vote by post.

As far as assessment of the result goes, I think there are two different levels here - what it says about the campaign, and what its media/political significance will be.

Considering the first, only UKIP come out of it well. The Lib Dem vote was down, and not by a little. Nor can it be put down to media hostility, because the Lib Dems spent most of the week insisting nobody was mentioning Rennard to them. It's the lowest by-election winning percentage in decades, which suggests that whilst they have a very effective operation in Eastleigh, they don't have an electorate that ticks the LD box without really thinking about it.

That said, the Tories did worse. Hutchings will presumably be considering her position looking towards 2015, and in the meantime they desperately need to build up some more infrastructure. I suspect they'll target Botley hard in 2014 to try to get a councillor there.

Labour's performance was not by any stretch of the imagination great, but nor was it disastrous. The third party in by-elections is often squeezed, and the disappointing Lib Dem result in Crewe & Nantwich didn't presage a kicking for them in 2010. The result looks bad if you assumed the Lib Dems would no longer get any tactical Labour votes, but that would never have been a sensible assumption. Our vote was already pretty heavily squeezed and the Lib Dems poured in activists. Three weeks in those circumstances wasn't enough to unsqueeze it. Picking O'Farrell didn't pay dividends, but I'm not convinced picking somebody more local would have been better - there's ever chance we'd have been even more marginalised as the media ignored us, and that we'd have done as badly or worse.

On the media level, there are only two things to say:

The pressure if off the Lib Dems, and on to the Tories. Sunday journalists are even now licking their lips at the internecine squabbles they can cover. Meanwhile they will probably stop trying to reinflate the Rennard story.

And UKIP will get some extra coverage. Which will be helpful to them for as long as Farage is sober and none of their other talking heads makes an inflammatory remark. I give it three days.

[Deleted]

[xftrev]

Mar 1, 2013 14:00:21 GMT East Anglian Lefty said:

 Meanwhile they will probably stop trying to reinflate the Rennard story.

Indeed, it will be fascinating to see if the story vanishes off the radar, as I suspect. If so, then it will be most illuminating.

[xftrev]

Mar 1, 2013 14:05:04 GMT doktorb🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ said:

A suitable case for horse DNA testing, if ever I saw one. 

[Philip Davies]

Mar 1, 2013 14:11:04 GMT xftrev said:

Mar 1, 2013 14:05:04 GMT doktorb🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ said:

A suitable case for horse DNA testing, if ever I saw one. 

Looks like Boss Nass from Phantom Mence.

[Khunanup]

Mar 1, 2013 13:12:10 GMT Pete Whitehead said:

My estimation of how the wards may have gone based on local election results (2011 and 2012)


Relative to the local elections as opposed the the 2010 general election, the Conservative share is about steady while Lib Dems and Labour losing around a third of theirs. It does seem quite likely then that UKIP did best in Eastleigh town itself and Bishopstoke (but I would guess Thornton held his own ward of Bishopstoke West) with the LD lead coming from Hedge End and West End etc. I'd be interested from anyone on the ground (Khunanup) who might confirm or refute this theory

I'm afraid I really can'r but I do understand that the Kippers did particularly well in the town itself. Certainly from my travels it was there and Netley Abbey (where I think UKIP have their normal constituency HQ) that I saw the most prevalance of UKIP posters and stakeboards. Tricky was in HQ for the entirety of the campaign though so (within reasona dn not giving to much detail away of course!) he would be the who might be able to give a better answer. I would also though agree that our Hedge End and West End votes would have been pretty solid. As far as the Tories go, apart from the town itself, I would say that it was a pretty even spread.

[Pimpernal]

Mar 1, 2013 13:12:10 GMT Pete Whitehead said:

My estimation of how the wards may have gone based on local election results (2011 and 2012)


Relative to the local elections as opposed the the 2010 general election, the Conservative share is about steady while Lib Dems and Labour losing around a third of theirs. It does seem quite likely then that UKIP did best in Eastleigh town itself and Bishopstoke (but I would guess Thornton held his own ward of Bishopstoke West) with the LD lead coming from Hedge End and West End etc. I'd be interested from anyone on the ground (Khunanup) who might confirm or refute this theory

No red strong holds then...

[The Bishop]

With just 10% of the vote overall, did you expect otherwise??

[Andrew_S]

I talked to some LD activists in Eastleigh yesterday and most of them thought the Tories would just about hold onto second place. So UKIP obviously did slightly better than a lot of local campaigners were expecting and the Tories worse.