Lib Dems gain council seat from Conservatives
First up an unusual Wednesday council by-election this week:
Then also four on Thursday, with three Lib Dem candidates in them:
Congratulations to new Liberal Democrat councillor, Nick Stuart.
As the local paper reports:
It’s fifth time lucky for a Liberal Democrat, Cllr Nick Stuart, as he secures a landslide victory in Brighstone, Calbourne and Shalfleet, winning a seat on the Isle of Wight Council…
He said: “It has been a long time coming. I have stood four times previously, unsuccessfully.
“The critical thing is to listen to voters, understand what the issues are and put that forward, with the values we hold.”
Thank you to Phil Ray for being the Lib Dem candidate in a by-election marked by Conservative splits, as Andrew Teale reports:
Defending for the Conservatives is Fraser McFarland, the chairman of the Bassetlaw branch of the party and chief of staff for the local MP Brendan Clarke-Fraser. His candidature appears to have exposed some splits in the Bassetlaw Conservatives: councillor Gerald Bowers, who was the leader of the Conservative group on Bassetlaw council, quit the party in protest at McFarland’s selection and is now an independent councillor.
Brian Meichen was the Liberal Democrat candidate – thank you.
For what all this means for the running total of council by-election results since the last May elections, see my council by-elections scorecard here.
These by-election results round-ups cover principal authority by-elections as it’s only those for which comprehensive results are available.
Understanding the opinion polls
For understanding what is happening in politics, by-elections have the advantage of being real votes in real ballot boxes. But the opinion polls have the advantage of trying to be a representative sample of voters, not just those in the places that happen to have by-elections. To understand the polls properly – and what they do and don’t really tell us – see my book, Polling UnPacked: The History, Uses and Abuses of Political Opinion Polls.
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I don’t know if Mark Pack agrees, but these results seem like other recent ones: a mixed bag including some large swings, and some very small ones. Certainly, the local results seem less consistently dire for the government than Westminster by-elections. My question to Mark, with his vast experience, is, Did the local results in the mid-1990s show the same mixed bag, or were they more consistently bad for the Tories then?