By-elections - 5th September 2013

[Deleted]

Sept 6, 2013 12:33:28 GMT East Anglian Lefty said:

Sept 6, 2013 12:19:17 GMT justlooking said:

And Labour out spent all other parties quite easily defending a safe seat.... curious.

Not really. All the other parties except UKIP knew they'd get a kicking, and weren't going to throw away money making it a slightly less emphatic kicking. And spending almost up to the limit to prevent the outside chance of a UKIP gain was a worthwhile insurance policy.

Surely to lose South Shields would have also meant that the winning candidate would have been able to celebrate by walking the frozen seas to Syria.

[Davıd Boothroyd]

Sept 6, 2013 12:40:25 GMT justlooking said:

Surely to lose South Shields would have also meant that the winning candidate would have been able to celebrate by walking the frozen seas to Syria.

I think it's quite possible to imagine, in a byelection in a safe seat where the local party has become complacent and not done much voter ID, a situation where the incumbent party selects a poor candidate and assumes that party loyalty will win through while UKIP selects a popular candidate who is more in touch with local feeling. As UKIP members have pointed out, they do have some members who can convincingly convey a left-wing stance if needed, and the UK is no stranger to left-wing opposition to EU membership (the largest part of UK opposition to the EU was from the left in 1971-89).

Has Bradford West been forgotten?

[Arthur Figgis]

Sept 6, 2013 12:23:00 GMT The Bishop said:

To a large degree that was needed because the previous incumbent had left the local party with virtually ZERO voter ID.

Is it not the local party who should be keeping the voter ID up to date?

[The Bishop]

I would see it as the responsibility of both, tbh. It seems the previous MP did not see it as a priority to chase his CLP up on this, at least.

[andrea]

The great majority of South Shields Labour campaign costs were in staff/agents. In the other sections (advertizing, leaflets, election materials, etch) of the expenses bill they were behind or level pegging with UKIP. Accommodation is the other feature where Labour outspent UKIP in South Shields.

It was a very "organisers led" campaign. Because, as it has been said, there was no voter ID. And also because the local members willing to help were not trusted in doing anything more than serving tea and putting stamps on envelopes. I am told some in the CLP didn't get involved at all (I didn't ask "who" but come to think, I can't recall seeing many photos of the Malcolms on the doorstep during the campaign). And we could still pretend that the favourite withdrawing 1 hour before the selection meeting was due a sudden change of heart in becoming an MP ....

Sept 6, 2013 13:42:35 GMT @trident said:

Sept 6, 2013 13:04:33 GMT The Bishop said:

I would see it as the responsibility of both, tbh. It seems the previous MP did not see it as a priority to chase his CLP up on this, at least.

David Miliband is almost certainly not alone among senior party figures in safe seats in having little or no voter ID data for their constituency, tbf.

Bishop is right that the MP (as a senior activist) is supposed to "lead" the CLP in being active. But I also suspect Trident is also right. For ex, I wouldn't be surprised to see a low figure for Doncaster North. When LabourList tried to ask shadow cabinet members to declare their CLP's contact rate, the Whip Office told MPs not to reveal it. The figures reported were Stephen Twigg 36%, Margaret Curran 45%, Ivan Lewis 60%.
I suspect the 45% in Glasgow East is thanks to the by-election's loss there. I recall a Scottish paper reporting that in the evening of by-election day Labour canvassers were knocking doors at random because they didn't have vote ID. Lewis' seat is Labour inclined but not safe. And Twigg is by all accounts an active MP who revitalized the moribund West Derby CLP. The voters contact rate is said to be quite good in all London CLPs.

[The Bishop]

Sept 6, 2013 13:42:35 GMT @trident said:

Sept 6, 2013 13:04:33 GMT The Bishop said:

I would see it as the responsibility of both, tbh. It seems the previous MP did not see it as a priority to chase his CLP up on this, at least.

David Miliband is almost certainly not alone among senior party figures in safe seats in having little or no voter ID data for their constituency, tbf.

True to an extent, but anecdotal evidence after said fact re S Shields was revealed suggests that 10-20% in our safe seats is rather more common than effectively zero.

What's it like in your constituency, btw?

[David Ashforth]

Sept 6, 2013 13:43:04 GMT andrea said:

When LabourList tried to ask shadow cabinet members to declare their CLP's contact rate, the Whip Office told MPs not to reveal it. The figures reported were Stephen Twigg 36%, Margaret Curran 45%, Ivan Lewis 60%.

How is "contact rate" defined? Is it speaking to voters on the phone or on the doorstep, or does leafleting count as a contact? Are street stalls and similar included? What time period is used to calculate the rate, a month, three-months, a year?

Thanks

[The Bishop]

Don't think they have been posted here yet, so the Wycombe DC figures were:

Con 379
UKIP 97
Lab 63

[andrea]

Sept 6, 2013 18:00:05 GMT @trident said:

Sept 6, 2013 13:43:04 GMT andrea said:

The voters contact rate is said to be quite good in all London CLPs.

That is probably because the party membership is much higher in London than elsewhere. I remember being told that Holborn and St Pancras had 1100 members.

They were 1181 in 2010. The top 9 CLPs at the time of the leadership election were all in London. London had 13 CLPs in the top 15 (the only 2 exceptions were Manchester Withinton and Luton North whose figures looked suspicious). Something like 44 London CLPs had more members than South Shields at the time (even Richmond Park and Twickenham)

[Davıd Boothroyd]

I think it's Ealing Southall that has the highest CLP membership of all - all those former IWA members.

[middleenglander]

Boston, Fenside - UKIP gain from English Democrat who did not defend the seat

Party	2013 votes	2013 share	since 2011 "top"	since 2011 "average"	since 2008 B	since 2007 "top"	since 2007 "average"
UKIP	162	39.4%	from nowhere	from nowhere	+35.6%	+24.8%	+24.2%
Conservative	87	21.2%	from nowhere	from nowhere	+2.4%	+2.9%	+2.1%
Lib Dems	87	21.2%	+10.6%	+11.5%	from nowhere	from nowhere	from nowhere
Labour	75	18.2%	-6.9%	-8.0%	+7.3%	-5.6%	-2.5%
English Democrats			-35.9%	-34.8%
Boston Bypass Ind			-28.3%	-29.2%	-22.3%	-43.3%	-45.0%
BNP					-44.1%
Total votes	411		-232	-201	-221	-321	-391

Swing not meaningful

Carlisle, Yewdale - Labour hold

Party	2013 votes	2013 share	since 2012	since 2011	since 2010	since 2008
Labour	716	48.7%	-10.5%	-11.0%	-0.6%	+7.2%
Conservatives	453	30.8%	-4.6%	-9.5%	-9.5%	-12.7%
UKIP	257	17.5%	from nowhere	from nowhere	from nowhere	from nowhere
Lib Dems	31	2.1%	-0.7%	from nowhere	from nowhere	from nowhere
Green	14	1.0%	-1.7%	from nowhere	-4.2%	from nowhere
TUSAC					-5.2%
BNP						-15.0%
Total votes	1,471		-593	-628	-1,884	-703

Swing Labour to Conservative 3% since 2012 and ~1% since 2011 but Conservative to Labour 4½% since 2010 and 10% since 2008

Charnwood, Loughborough Ashby - Labour hold

Party	2013 votes	2013 share	since 2011 "top"	since 2011 "average"	since 2007 "top"	since 2007 "average"
Labour	375	71.8%	+9.6%	+7.4%	+31.5%	+32.6%
UKIP	118	22.6%	from nowhere	from nowhere	from nowhere	from nowhere
Conservatives	29	5.6%	-32.2%	-30.0%	-37.0%	-37.7%
BNP					-17.1%	-17.5%
Total votes	522		-818	-759	-761	-739

Swing if meaningful Conservative to Labour ~20% since 2011 and ~35% since 2007 

Cornwall, Wadebridge East - Lib Dem gain from Independent

Party	2013 B votes	2013 B share	since May 2013	since 2009
Lib Dems	408	31.8%	+6.9%	from nowhere
Independent 1	399	31.1%	+5.9%	-13.0%
Conservatives	217	16.9%	+5.6%	-16.4%
UKIP	202	15.7%	+0.1%	from nowhere
Labour	58	4.5%	-7.6%	from nowhere
Independent 2			-11.0%	-22.6%
Total votes	1,284		-47	-55

Little swing since May 2013 and not meaningful since 2009

Daventry, Ravensthorpe - Conservative hold

Party	2013 votes	2013 share	since 2012	since 2008
Conservatives	285	46.5%	-15.3%	-27.7%
UKIP	212	34.6%	from nowhere	from nowhere
Labour	93	15.2%	from nowhere	+6.5%
Lib Dems	23	3.8%	-14.5%	-13.3%
English Democrats			-20.0%
Total votes	613		-67	-108

Swing not meaningful

East Cambridgeshire, Ely East - Conservative hold

Party	2013 votes	2013 share	since 2011 "top"	since 2011 "average"	since 2007 "top"	since 2007 "average"
Conservatives	418	37.4%	-4.6%	-5.2%	-8.5%	-8.8%
Lib Dems	322	28.8%	-8.3%	-8.6%	-8.1%	-9.6%
UKIP	146	13.1%	from nowhere	from nowhere	from nowhere	from nowhere
Labour	138	12.4%	-8.6%	-7.5%	from nowhere	from nowhere
Independent	93	8.3%	from nowhere	from nowhere	-8.9%	-7.2%
Total votes	1,117		-343	-302	-151	-84

Swing Lib Dem to Conservative ~1¾% since 2011 but negligible since 2007

Northamptonshire, Middleton Cheney - Conservative hold

Party	2013 B votes	2013 B share	since May 2013	since 2009
Conservatives	1,081	52.8%	+10.0%	-9.3%
UKIP	604	29.5%	-5.8%	from nowhere
Labour	221	12.4%	-2.3%	-0.3%
Lib Dems	141	6.9%	-1.9%	-19.8%
Total votes	2,047		-677	-970

Swing UKIP to Conservatives ~8% since May 2013

St Edmundsbury, Bardwell - Conservative hold

Party	2013 votes	2013 share	since 2011	since 2007
Conservatives	419	66.1%	-10.7%	-9.0%
UKIP	150	23.7%	+0.4%	-1.2%
Labour	65	10.3%	from nowhere	from nowhere
Total votes	634		-326	-85

Swing Conservative to UKIP 5½% since 2011 and 4% since 2007

Torridge, Torrington - Green gain from Lib Dem who did not defend the seat

Party	2013 votes	2013 share	2011 share of total	2007 share of total
Green	292	35.3%		10.7%
UKIP	181	21.9%	6.0%
Independent 1	160	19.3%	22.9%	21.0%
Independent 2	106	12.8%	13.9%	14.8%
Conservatives	88	10.6%	23.4%	18.8%
Independent 3				14.4%
Independent 4				5.4%
Lib Dems 1			18.6%	15.0%
Lib Dems 2			6.1%
Labour			9.0%
Total all votes	827		circa 1,150	circa 1,100

Swing not meaningful

Wycombe, Hambledon Valley - Conservative hold

Party	2013 votes	2013 share	since 2011	2007
Conservative	379	70.3%	-9.8%	unopposed
UKIP	97	18.0%	from nowhere
Labour	63	11.7%	from nowhere
Lib Dems			-19.9%
Total votes	539		-485

Swing not meaningful

[No Offence Alan]

Sept 6, 2013 18:00:05 GMT @trident said:

Sept 6, 2013 13:43:04 GMT andrea said:

The voters contact rate is said to be quite good in all London CLPs.

That is probably because the party membership is much higher in London than elsewhere. I remember being told that Holborn and St Pancras had 1100 members.

I guess having the Mayoralty election every 4 years helps, since it always has to be fought like a "marginal" ?

[electionknight]

I like reading these local By-election topics, especially when there's several results across the country. It's like a small cross - section of what's happening nationally. I wonder what happened to the Tories in Loughborough?

[David Ashforth]

Sept 6, 2013 17:55:42 GMT @trident said:

Sept 6, 2013 16:30:10 GMT David Ashforth said:

How is "contact rate" defined? Is it speaking to voters on the phone or on the doorstep, or does leafleting count as a contact? Are street stalls and similar included? What time period is used to calculate the rate, a month, three-months, a year?

Thanks

I suppose it could mean different things to different people, but it is generally understood as the percentage of the electorate for whom you hold data regarding their voting intention, obtained either by canvassing on the doorstep or on the phone.

So, you could have canvassed a large percentage of the electorate before the last general election and canvassed nobody since and still have a high contact rate. While old data is better than no data, contact rate seeks flawed as a measure of parties’ performance unless used alongside other measures such as, say, percentage of the electorate canvassed in the past month.

But, you say ‘generally understood’ so I guess contact rate isn’t quite as “official” as that.

[tim13]

No, "contact rate", or whatever it is called by different parties is not defined - I would agree with Trident from a Lib Dem background,
except I would add it should be "recent", and "relevant" data, ie something you can use for your current election. Canvassing a general election, for instance, using the last set of District canvasses
would be pretty useless, as many people support different parties in GEs from locals. LDs would be wise currently not to rely on anything pre-2010.

[Deleted]

Just wanted to say. middle, that 'likes' are insufficient for your admirable summaries of results and swings: saves so much time and effort in looking for the trends in by-elections

[Merseymike]

Sept 6, 2013 15:03:05 GMT @trident said:

[quote author="andrea" source="/post/100233/thread" timestamp="1378474984It was a very "organisers led" campaign. Because, as it has been said, there was no voter ID.

By-elections are always organiser-led. They are a national event of national political significance and need to be run by someone who knows what they are doing and can work 60 or 70 hours a week on the task. To be perfectly honest, a lot of party activists in safe seats don't know what they're doing, because they have never needed to learn in the first place.

I was in a nearby marginal seat at the general election, spending most of the time in wards that are solid Labour at council level. A guy was sent up from London to run the campaign and was very unpopular with the local councillors who thought they were being taught to suck eggs ("I've been knocking on doors for forty years, I don't need some jumped up youngster telling me how to do it"). But this guy was doing it properly - using a questionnaire to do voter ID on the doorstep, keeping proper records, etc. You do not get good quality canvassing data by knocking on a door and saying, "Are you Labour, love?"!!!

Although the new ways have their problems. In this area many voters do not want to be kept gabbing on doorsteps for hours being asked if they actually voted LD last time. And then hassling people five or six times on election day even when they have been out to vote also pisses people off

[East Anglian Lefty]

Sept 6, 2013 21:57:00 GMT David Ashforth said:

Sept 6, 2013 17:55:42 GMT @trident said:

I suppose it could mean different things to different people, but it is generally understood as the percentage of the electorate for whom you hold data regarding their voting intention, obtained either by canvassing on the doorstep or on the phone.

So, you could have canvassed a large percentage of the electorate before the last general election and canvassed nobody since and still have a high contact rate. While old data is better than no data, contact rate seeks flawed as a measure of parties’ performance unless used alongside other measures such as, say, percentage of the electorate canvassed in the past month.

But, you say ‘generally understood’ so I guess contact rate isn’t quite as “official” as that.

There is a distinction between the overall contact rate, produced by Contact Creator and used as the easiest obtainable metric, and the contact data that actually is used in a campaign setting.

Thus in a campaign we might look at voter ID in the past month, or past 3 months, or past year. I've seen voter ID sheets before where the previous contact details were from 1994, but there's obviously no way that's meaningful. In that sense the official rate is much less useful, but then again there's no alternative method that's universally appropriate.

The problem is that there is a distinction between high swing areas with a high turnover of voters (Cambridge is a prime example of this, so we put a lot of effort in to making sure our contacts are as recent and frequent as possible) and low swing areas with a limited turnover of voters, which describes a lot of our safe seats fairly well. In the latter case, part of the reason for the lower contact rates is that knocking on doors every weekend simply isn't as necessary for electoral success as it is in somewhere like Cambridge.

[slicesofjim]

Torrington isn't all that surprising. Quite a poor town but with an artsy-culturey tinge, the sort of middle-classes who vote Green. There's a big campaign to stop bed closures at the hospital there as well at the moment, which might have something to do with it. The Lib Dems were pulling their trick of standing as an independent, it doesn't seem to be working for them in Torridge anymore. I think it might in North Devon in 2015 though.

[tim13]

Jim, you are probably right about Lib Dem actions (I hasten to add I have no inside track on what happened in Torrington this time). Since the bad old days of Mervyn Lane, Lib Dem candidates and councillors have been a lot less well-known than in North Devon, where most of the leading players have been very well known "since Methuselah was a boy"! That applies both to those who are currently sitting as Independents as well as those still described as Lib Dems.