#OldBexleyAndSidcup by-election – who’s won?
By-election: voters turn out to elect a successor to the late James Brokenshire. This is probably representative of the actual turnout.
Polling stations have closed in the Old Bexley and Sidcup by-election – so who do you think has won, and (more importantly) how?
I reckoned turnout would be much lower than previously, and reports suggest this is right.
Following on from that, I think the Tory candidate will take it because it’s Labour voters and Tory swing-voters who didn’t rock up to vote; Labour voters because they know Labour is rubbish under Keir Starmer and Tory swing-voters because they know the Conservatives are rubbish under Boris Johnson.
That leaves Tory tribalists as the only large group.
We may also see large percentages of the vote taken by the smaller parties – particularly the Greens, who’ll take a lot of the “protest” votes.
Incidentally, why do we see votes for candidates as percentages of turnout, but never as percentages of the total electorate, which would be more informative if you think about it? Can’t the relevant authorities strain their intelligence enough to provide both?
Anyway, let’s have a quick poll:
Who do you think has won the Old Bexley and Sidcup by-election? Give your reason in the comments please!
— Mike Sivier (@MidWalesMike) December 2, 2021
If you’re still up, get a comment in and tell us your prediction – while you can!
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Conservative reduced majority. Increase in Greens at the expense of both Conservative and Labour. Sleaze won’t make too much difference to the core Tory vote. Birds of a feather
Sky News are reporting a 10.2% swing to Labour.
There you go – you see what you just did? You’re quoting changes in the shares of the vote this time around, relative to the shares of the vote in 2019. These bear no resemblance to what actually happened, which is that Labour lost more than 4,000 votes. The candidate’s share of the total number of votes available was a six per cent fall from what was achieved in 2019.
This is the reason I was criticising the mass media’s refusal to refer to candidates’ votes as percentages of the total number of votes available, rather than votes cast.
Read more, accuratecoverage in my article on the by-election result.
The fact remains that despite the very low turnout Labour retained 62% of their 2019 vote whilst the Tories only managed to retain 38% of their 2019 vote.
On a much reduced turnout Labour’s vote dropped by only 4,123 (6% of the electorate) whilst the Tories vote dropped by 18,597 (28% of the electorate).
The Tories actually lost more than 3 votes for every one they actually recieved.
It was quite a good result for Labour
NO, it WASN’T.
Even with such a reduced turnout, the Tory still had one-and-two-thirds times as many votes as the Labour candidate. And the Tory lost votes because the public hate his party at the moment, not because anybody likes Labour.
The fact that Labour couldn’t capitalise on the many Tory scandals is a disaster for Keir Starmer because his only selling point at the moment is the fact that he’s not in the Tory Party. He has no policies that the normal Labour-voting public will support, as shown by the refusal of people who would normally vote for that party to turn out yesterday.
Mike – Which of the long list of policies that were announced at this years conference do you think ordinary voters won’t support. I gave you a list of all the policies a couple of days ago that you haven’t published.
It is undeniable that the Labour vote held up much better than the Tory vote.
I’ve told you already that Keir Starmer can come up with policy after policy and it won’t make a scrap of difference because KEIR STARMER IS A LIAR.
We all know that he’ll get rid of any or all of the policies he has announced at any time it is expedient for him to do so. In such a situation it would be stupid to vote for him on the basis of ANY policy he has announced. You simply can’t trust him to follow it through.
The Labour vote didn’t hold up better than the Tory vote. The election established that the tribal Tory vote in that constituency is more than 11,000 people, while the tribal Labour vote is between 6,000 and 7,000. As far as I can tell, around 7,000 is fewer than 11,000. So by any yardstick you care to use, Labour are losers there.
What a cowardly cop-out
Don’t troll This Site.
If you don’t have an answer to somebody else’s reasoned argument, then it is unwise to resort to insults.
On your way.
Oh dear yet another cop out, I’m sorry I hadn’t appreciated that your site operated as your own personal safe space.
It doesn’t. It’s a safe space for anybody to discuss politics, free from facing personal attacks. As you seem unwilling to abide by that rule – one of which you should be well aware by now, I’ll be blocking you from any further comments.
I’ve been extremely tolerant with you but enough is enough.
ps – Using your methodology it is questionable whether Unite’s newly elected leader has a credible mandate. Only about 5% of Unite’s membership could be bothered to vote for her,
I would have preferred the vote to be by proportional representation. I see that Unite now supports PR in Parliamentary elections, so it would certainly be hypocritical of that union not to install such a system into its own electoral processes.
“Incidentally, why do we see votes for candidates as percentages of turnout, but never as percentages of the total electorate,
Its easy enough to work out from the figures commonly given.
Yes indeed, so why aren’t they provided as a matter of course?