Local Council by-election 23rd March 2023

[andrewp]

19.3% Turnout in Rushden

[kevinf]

Mar 23, 2023 21:09:13 GMT Davıd Boothroyd said:

Don't know whether this is a byelection or regularly scheduled but:

We should elect members of the National Park Authorities in England, too…

[finsobruce]

Mar 24, 2023 11:28:48 GMT kevinf said:

Mar 23, 2023 21:09:13 GMT Davıd Boothroyd said:

Don't know whether this is a byelection or regularly scheduled but:

We should elect members of the National Park Authorities in England, too…

voters wouldn't be able to see the wood for the trees.

[iang]

It would encourage parties to set up local branches though...

[carolus]

Only if they could handle the peaks and downs of electoral fortune.

[finsobruce]

Mar 24, 2023 12:09:20 GMT carolus said:

Only if they could handle the peaks and downs of electoral fortune.

They could always claim electoral fraud and call the copse.

[andrewp]

Rushden South

Melanie Coleman – Conservative – 1,210
Chris Ashton – Labour - 638
Cassandra Blythe - Liberal Democrat - 157
Dave Merlane - Breakthrough Party - 120
Will Morris - Green Party - 93

[andrewp]

Rushden percentages

Con 54.6% (+5.2)
Lab 28.8% (+6.6)
LD 7.1% (-6.3)
Breakthrough 5.4% ( from nowhere)
Green 4.2% (-10.8)

[The Bishop]

Tories can be pleased with that, as can Breakthrough with beating the Greens. LibDems didn't follow up some decent TC results here.

[matureleft]

Mar 24, 2023 12:18:29 GMT The Bishop said:

Tories can be pleased with that, as can Breakthrough with beating the Greens. LibDems didn't follow up some decent TC results here.

Yup. Looks like the Tories had a very strong local candidate but this indicates, as a number of other results have, that Labour's poll figures are pretty soft - low turnout and good opposing candidates are sufficient to deflect the preference against the Tories. Labour had a local candidate (if he was able to stand for the town council too) so this wasn't a token effort. 

But Labour hasn't really been competitive in Rushden for a long while and that affects both voter perception and party activity. 

[The Bishop]

Though that isn't incompatible with May's results being bad overall for the Tories, when turnouts should usually be higher and "local factors" will matter less.

[Pete Whitehead]

Quite a good result for the far-left candidate - did he have some kind of local profile?

[yellowperil]

Neither the Green nor the Lib Dem were that local, which probably didn't help either of them -the Lib Dems had a different candidate for the concurrent parish election, while the Greens had no candidate for that one. I spotted all that just too late to adjust my entries in the prediction competition.I think the Tories had a good candidate and maybe not a stereotypical Tory one either. Very much an election based on local rather than national factors, which is maybe just what you might expect from somewhere like Rushden.

[batman]

Not sure how big Newton Bromswold is, but it's certainly big enough to have at least one pub, which many moons ago I went to (in days gone by, I spent quite a lot of time in the NW Beds/SE Northants area) and it's quite an upmarket village IIRC.

[tonyhill]

Greens seem to be having a run of poor results - I can't think of an explanation for that.

[Tony Otim]

Mar 24, 2023 13:28:14 GMT tonyhill said:

Greens seem to be having a run of poor results - I can't think of an explanation for that.

Mainly coincidental, I would guess, it's been a run of results where in general (a) we've not been in contention, (b) not been trying, (c) our voteshare has been perhaps artificially high due to having previously been the only non-big 2 candidates (this week I'd guess Green, LD and to a lesser extent Labour voteshares were all rather inflated previously due to only 1 or 2 candidates for 3 seats and some sharing of votes).

The last one we were genuinely in contention for was Hythe West, which we won, so at the moment, not too worried

The exception to all this I would say was Stirling last week, where we have a seat in the ward - but I never managed to pick up that we were trying very hard there (which I find incredibly disappointing and frustrating) and the candidate choice was odd if we were genuinely trying there.

[finsobruce]

Mar 24, 2023 13:25:33 GMT batman said:

Not sure how big Newton Bromswold is, but it's certainly big enough to have at least one pub, which many moons ago I went to (in days gone by, I spent quite a lot of time in the NW Beds/SE Northants area) and it's quite an upmarket village IIRC.

The Swan. Still open according to a review on Tripadvisor, among other places.

[Davıd Boothroyd]

At last the City of London results,

CITY OF LONDON Castle Baynard

Hudson, Michael (Independent) 93
Goodchild, Edward David John (Independent) 47
Longman, Scott Marcus (Independent) 32
Everett, Kevin Malcolm (Independent) 21

Spoilt votes: 4; Turnout: 11.9%

CITY OF LONDON Cripplegate

Frampton, Dawn Margaret (Independent) 369
Meyringer, Lionel (Independent) 214
Mylne, Angus Spencer Athol (Independent) 46

Spoilt votes: 7; Turnout: 29.2%

[Tony Otim]

It's a resounding victory for the independents, which they'll be very happy about, by contrast the independents will be feeling very sore from the electoral drubbing that they've received here.

[East Anglian Lefty]

Mar 24, 2023 13:25:33 GMT batman said:

Not sure how big Newton Bromswold is, but it's certainly big enough to have at least one pub, which many moons ago I went to (in days gone by, I spent quite a lot of time in the NW Beds/SE Northants area) and it's quite an upmarket village IIRC.

It's tiny. Electorate of 63 as of 2022.

That said, even when we were competitive in Rushden this would not have been one of the stronger areas of town for Labour.