Local Council by-elections 16th 19th September 2024

[sanders]

Having their only Nottinghamshire MP running for leader probably didn’t do the Tories any harm in Gedling? That’s probably not relevant but a big swing - anyone know why? Reform not standing may have made the difference between a Labour hold and the Tories winning.

[robert1]

Recommended viewing-the declaration!! Clearly the masses of Gedling were hanging on the result.

[Pete Whitehead]

I don't know how relevant it might be, but Bestwood village itself was in the Sherwood seat rather than Gedling up until the recent general election. Culturally quite different from the core Carlton/Arnold area I would think

[sanders]

Loving the North Korean colour scheme

[andrewteale]

Bentwood Village was a ward of its own until 2015 and it had Labour coalfield voting patterns. That parish also has a large gated retirement community, Killarney Park; I wonder what turnout there was like.

[andrewp]

In my little bit of Googling for the prediction competition, the Con candidate seemed to have a couple of things going for him- a lot of activity supporting armed forced veterans- but he has lost before and I thought he would do reasonably well but didn’t think he would win.

[The Bishop]

Were there any notable local issues the Tories campaigned on?

If this is simply a generic anti-Labour swing, they could be in for a bit of a rough time later this week.

[batman]

Well there was little sign of such a generic swing 4 days earlier, some of it will be generic but mostly there will be local reasons. Who knows , the last few days could have seen some swing but it’s surely likelier to be local factors.

[mattbewilson]

It's a weird one because I understand that Gedling Labour are fairly popular locally. Maybe Pete's onto something about the fact this is technically in Sherwood

[The Bishop]

Indeed, the Labour gain there in July was one of their most crushing anywhere - against a sitting Tory MP too.

By all accounts the party locally is both popular and well organised, but has "surprisingly" lost a byelection before (to the LibDems at the start of 2022)

[andrewp]

Gedling Labour Party has an effective record. As I said earlier, I think the Tories had a pretty good candidate here.

I’m not sure we’ve had the changes but:

Con 47.8% (+16.3)
Lab 40.1% (-12.3)
LD 12.1% (+6.4)
No Green from before

The last couple of opinion polls have had a national Lab lead of 4%, and you’d expect that the Lab position has not got any better since those polls. In May 2023, the last time this seat was fought Lab had a national lead of 16%. So the national swing since then is Lab to Con 6% ( + maybe a little bit more since the last polls). Add in a decent Tory candidate maybe and I don’t think it’s that way out of the ballpark. Plus of course it’s perhaps a mugs game trying to attach any reason to this as we are talking about quite a low number of votes here.

[vino]

I live a few miles away from Bestwood [in Hucknall] and I was very surprised by the result - I've spoken to a voter this morning who told me she voted on national issues - mentioning the WFAllowance - Bestwood has grown a lot since the Pit closure in 1967 lots of new houses.

[swanarcadian]

Whilst acknowledging that getting back to power will not be a plain sailing journey for the Conservative Party, and the usual caveats are thrown in, I’d forgotten how good it feels to be able to start picking up seats in by-elections again. It’s been a long time. There’s no better consolation prize if you find yourself on the Opposition side.

[batman]

Of course it's a nice feeling, but it's one you weren't able to have last week. This is literally one seat on a heavily Labour council. Since May Labour has still enjoyed net gains of seats in council by-elections.

[swanarcadian]

I appreciate that. One swallow, etc. The best result was probably from 22 August which led to Three Rivers council being in no overall control.

[vino]

Sept 17, 2024 14:20:47 GMT swanarcadian said:

Whilst acknowledging that getting back to power will not be a plain sailing journey for the Conservative Party, and the usual caveats are thrown in, I’d forgotten how good it feels to be able to start picking up seats in by-elections again. It’s been a long time. There’s no better consolation prize if you find yourself on the Opposition side.

Would have been interesting if a Reform candidate had stood.

[swanarcadian]

Sept 17, 2024 15:09:41 GMT vino said:

Sept 17, 2024 14:20:47 GMT swanarcadian said:

Whilst acknowledging that getting back to power will not be a plain sailing journey for the Conservative Party, and the usual caveats are thrown in, I’d forgotten how good it feels to be able to start picking up seats in by-elections again. It’s been a long time. There’s no better consolation prize if you find yourself on the Opposition side.

Would have been interesting if a Reform candidate had stood.

Yes. We’ll just have to wait and see to what extent Farage will try to replicate the UKIP successes from about ten years ago.

[David]

Sept 17, 2024 14:32:43 GMT batman said:

Of course it's a nice feeling, but it's one you weren't able to have last week. This is literally one seat on a heavily Labour council. Since May Labour has still enjoyed net gains of seats in council by-elections.

Still a good feeling but of course last week were mostly very tough ones for a Conservative candidate. Very safe Labour wards in north and East London. Albeit Lab were able to win safe Con ones at the tail end of the last government. It will be interesting to see Thursday's batch, which are a bit more mixed and might start seeing glimmers of a trend

[phil156]

GOOD NEWS
They are ALL counting on the night after polls close

[finsobruce]

Sept 18, 2024 13:33:22 GMT phil156 said:

GOOD NEWS
They are ALL counting on the night after polls close

Someone is thinking of the psephologists for once.