Witney byelection: Labour and Lib Dems hope for a Brexit bounce
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Version 0 of 1. As voters in Witney go to the ballot box on Thursday the expected victor, Conservative candidate Robert Court, and his party will be wondering what percentage share of the vote he will hold once the ballots are counted. Court is seeking the seat vacated by David Cameron who secured 60% of the vote in the last general election. The constituency has had a Tory MP since its creation in 1983 and at no time in that period has the sitting candidate had less than 43% of the vote. But this is the first seat the Tories have contested since Brexit and both the Lib Dems and Labour are circling in the hope they may gain votes. There is past evidence to support this: byelection candidates put forward by the sitting government are frequently punished for the sins of their party, and none more so than the Conservatives. Analysis of 25 years of byelection data shows that, since the 1992 general election, when Conservatives have defended a seat while in government, the average swing away from them is 22%. This is worse than Labour’s record: when it was in power between 1997 and 2010 the average swing away was 15%. The Liberal Democrats defended just one seat while in government which they held despite a 14.5% swing away. But while Court may not secure the same proportion of the vote when the results are announced on Friday he can lose 22% of the Witney vote and still come away better than the average Conservative result in similar circumstances. The Conservatives don’t do well in byelections: over the past 25 years the Conservatives have defended 12 byelection seats and lost 11 of them. Between 1992 and 1997, a disastrous parliamentary cycle for the Tories, every single byelection seat held by the governing Tory party, was lost, eight in all. A similar pattern emerges in the byelections that have taken place more recently. Since retaking parliamentary control in 2010 the Conservatives have had four seats that were later contested at byelections. Of these they held just one, they lost a second seat to Labour and two other to Ukip defectors Douglas Carswell and Mark Reckless. Labour has enjoyed a better history than its Tory counterparts. While in government between 1997 and 2010 there were 24 byelections for Labour-held seats. Of these the party held 18 and lost six. Methodology: Byelection and the preceding general election results analysed include every byelection held since the 1992 general election. In two cases Labour MPs who acted as speaker resigned their seat: these were treated as Labour seats for the purposes of the analysis. |