There’s two interesting by-elections taking place in coming weeks, one in the UK in the House of Commons seat of Norwich North on 23 July, and the other in the Tasmanian Legislative Council seat of Pembroke on 1 August.
The Norwich North by-election was triggered by the resignation of Labour MP Ian Gibson, who resigned from Parliament in the aftermath of the recent expenses scandal, after the Labour Party prohibited him from running for re-election as a Labour candidate.
At the 2005 general election, the result was:
- Labour – 44.9%
- Conservative – 33.2%
- Liberal Democrat – 16.2%
- Green – 2.7%
Despite the low Green vote, Norwich is Green Party heartland, with a large contingent on Norwich City Council, and the party came first in Norwich in the recent European election. It should be noted, however, that the more Green parts of Norwich tend to be in the Norwich South Constituency, where the Greens polled much more in the 2005 election.
Labour and Conservative have both chosen young candidates, either of whom would be the youngest member of the House of Commons if elected. The Liberal Democrats have chosen April Pond, who polled 18% in North-West Norfolk in 2005. The Green Party has chosen Rupert Read, who is a local Norwich councillor and was the party’s lead candidate for the East of England at the recent
The only poll I have seen for the constituency gave the following figures:
- CON 34%
- LAB 30%
- LD 15%
- GRN 14%
I would expect that the Conservatives would win this seat, however, even after a large swing away from Labour, the gap is not very large. Most of the swing away from Labour appears to have flowed to the Liberal Democrats and the Greens. It will also be interesting to see if the Greens can come third in the race, which could put Read in a strong position to run seriously for Norwich South at the next general election. You would have to consider Norwich South to be one of a handful of seats the Greens will seriously target.
Does Gordon Brown have much of a chance?
He has until June 2010 to call the election and currently I think they are facing a Conservative landslide. I suppose for Labour to retain in government, some of the following has to occur:
Economic recovery.
Major expenses reform.
Ambitious new legislative agenda.
Lib-Lab pact.
New leader?
There ain’t gonna be a Lib-Lab pact. I’m skeptical about any of the other things happening.
This seat really needs preferential voting (preferably multi-member STV) or at least supplementary voting. Maybe this seat will be the UK`s Swan by-election?
http://psephos.adam-carr.net/countries/a/australia/1917/1917repsby.txt
The interesting thing will be to see to what extent tactical voting occurs amongst the anti-conservative voters. One would assume, for instance, that Labour supporters will expect that Labour can’t possibly win, so, if they want to try and defeat the Tories, may turn out and vote for whichever of the Lib Dems or Greens comes to be considered the most likely to beat the Tories. If Read were to become seen as the most likely candidate to defeat the Tories, then a lot of Labour and Lib Dem supporters might vote Green. My money would probably still be on the Tories to win, but it will be very interesting to see what happens.
Re Norwich South, as I recall the Lib Dems put a lot of resources into trying to defeat Charles Clarke in 2005, so I’d guess they probably took some votes away from the Greens, which means the Greens’ are probably better placed there than the 2005 results suggest. With the Lib Dems’ support fading, I doubt they can win it next year, but if they aggressively target the seat again it will presumably split the left-wing anti-Labour vote again and hurt the Greens’ chances. As far as I know, the two parties aren’t particularly friendly, so such an unfortunate scenario is probably likely.
@Ben Raue
He is stuffed then.
Results have just come in on the Guardian webpage
“12.54pm: Ukip beat the Green and were only around 700 votes behind the Lib Dems
12.51pm: Here are the key figures:
Conservatives: 13,591
Labour: 6,243
Lib Dems: 4,803
12.50pm: The Tories have won by around 7,000!”
A little disapointing the Greens couldn’t get ahead of UKIP here.
Having said that – it is a 7% swing to the Greens. Full resutls here:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-defeated-in-byelection-1759507.html
According to the Greens’ Facebook page this is their best result in a by-election to date. Even though I agree it is disappointing they did not beat UKIP, it’s clearly a result that shows progress and promise.
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