Analysis: Thursday, 1st March's By-elections

by
Duncan Bruce (@duncanqbruce)

In what may become a regular feature I will be looking at some of the by-elections that occur every Thursday around the country and see what those results may mean for Labour and whether it could indicate a national or regional trend.

This week there we two by-elections, Castle ward (Cumbria County Council) and Abbey ward (Shropshire County Council, the most interesting of the two being Castle ward as it features all three major political parties vying for control.

The by-election in Castle ward promised to be a showdown, the seat was fairly safe for the Liberal Democrats but in 2011 they were hit with a massive swing against them, and Labour gained it the City Council seat.  The question for Carlisle Labour was would that trend hold? and would they be able to gain the County Council seat in the ward?, the results are in:

Labour: 407
LibDem: 369
Conservative: 93
Green: 54
UKIP: 22

Based on the County Council elections of 2009, thats a huge 8.2% swing from Liberal Democrat to Labour, but when you take into account the 2011 Carlisle City election you find that its actually just over 2% swing back to Liberal Democrat from Labour. This is fairly in keeping with by-elections, Labour tends to poll lower because our vote, partially due to demographic, only votes when there is a town/city/country-wide election.

2010 Carlisle General Election Result

What is also interesting about the result is the poor Tory showing. The Conservatives in Carlisle have a problem, in 2010 they did what many said was impossible and gained the Carlisle MPs seat, a seat which had been held by Labour since 1964; However all is not perfect as their victory was small, they gained the seat by a little over 800 votes making it one of Labour's top targets to gain in 2015 and making it almost impossible for them to hold.  As well as this the Conservative control of Carlisle City Council has begun to fade, Labour currently has 24 Councillors with the Tories on 22 and the Liberal Democrats on 3 - The Conservatives are currently hanging on to minority control of the council with the 'unofficial' support of the Independents and the Liberal Democrats.

The other by-election was for Shropshire County Council and saw the Liberal Democrats win a seat off the Conservatives. The reason I am not going to focus on this one is that simply its hard to form an analyses without having Labour in the mix, however one thing that does appear to be developing which could be a factor in 2015 is that when its Labour vs. LibDem, Labour almost always win, but when its Tory vs. LibDem the LibDem vote does tend to hold (although that did not happen here in Reading in Tilehurst ward). The results:

LibDem: 550
Conservative: 542
Green: 123

A swing of 10.2% to the Liberal Democrats from the 2009 election.

Graphics courtesy of the BBC.