Conservatives win seat off Labour in Cambridge
An unconventional Tuesday by-election this week also saw a rare Conservative gain from Labour:
Thank you to Jamie Dalzell for being the Liberal Democrat candidate.
As the BBC reports:
The Conservatives have cited a proposed congestion charge as a reason behind winning their their first seat on a city council since 2012.
Mohamed Delowar Hossain won Tuesday’s by-election in the King’s Hedges ward on Cambridge City Council.
The vacancy occurred after Labour’s ex-deputy leader, Alex Collis, resigned over the plan to make drivers by tolls.
Although the Conservatives have attacked both Labour and the Lib Dems over traffic plans in and around Cambridge, it’s worth noting that the Liberal Democrat vote rose.
This was the first by-election of a new quarter, so you can catch-up on the summary results of by-elections in the previous quarter here.
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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If you sign up for my daily email with the latest pieces from this site, you’ll also get included as a little bonus the full set of council by-election results each week:
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The Labour councillor who resigned from the council and caused the by-election in Kings Hedges Cambridge), allowing the Tories to win, did not resign because of the proposed congestion charge. She was the Labour Group Deputy Leader who had just been re-elected as a councillor. She resigned following a putsch against the(female) leader of the Labour Group by a man with which she disagreed. She also left the Labour Party.
it’s all ‘margin of error’ stuff. Unless someone gets 50% then they haven’t got a mandate.. if there’s more votes cast against you than for you.. There will be no democracy until we have PR.