Eastleigh; A Victory for Democracy >

Much as been made of the result of the Eastleigh By-election and the surge in support for Ukip but there has been little made of the fact that the Liberal Democrat was elected with just 32 06% of the vote on a 52 .08% turnout

Eastleigh by-election, 2013
Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	Liberal Democrat	Mike Thornton	13,342	32.06%	-14.44%
	UKIP	Diane James	11,571	27.80%	+24.20%
	Conservative	Maria Hutchings	10,559	25.37%	-13.93%
	Labour	John O'Farrell	4,088	9.82%	+0.22%
	Independent	Danny Stupple	768	1.85%	N/A
	National Health Action	Iain Maclennan	392	0.94%	N/A
	Beer, Baccy and Crumpet Party	Ray Hall	235	0.56%	N/A
	Christian	Kevin Milburn	163	0.39%	N/A
	Monster Raving Loony	Howling Laud Hope	136	0.33%	N/A
	Peace	Jim Duggan	128	0.31%	N/A
	Elvis Loves Pets	David Bishop	72	0.17%	N/A
	English Democrats	Michael Walters	70	0.17%	-0.33%
	TUSC	Daz Procter	62	0.15%	N/A
	Wessex Regionalist	Colin Bex	30	0.07%	N/A
Majority			1,771	4.26%	-2.9%
Turnout			41,616	52.8%	-16.5%
	Liberal Democrat hold		Swing	-19.32

This of course is as nothing compared to the result in   Inverness, Nairn and Lochaber in 1992

General Election 1992: Inverness, Nairn and Lochaber[3]
Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	Liberal Democrat	Sir David Russell Johnston	13,258	26.0	−10.8
	Labour	David John Stewart	12,800	25.1	−0.2
	SNP	Fergus Stewart Ewing	12,562	24.7	+9.9
	Conservative	John Scott	11,517	22.6	−0.4
	Green	John Martin	766	1.5	+1.5
Majority			458	0.9	−10.6
Turnout			50,903	73.6	+2.7
	Liberal Democrat hold		Swing	−5.3

Py is somewhat ironic that it is the Liberal Democrats the great supporters of proportional representation (PR) who are were there major  beneficiary  from this .

Of course it could be argued that if these elections were to be conducted under the Alternative Vote the Liberal Democrats would have still won

But it is not inevitable .

In Eastleigh there were 2072 vote transfer from the group of "others"   to be dispersed with and the make up of whom would go into the final vote would be unclear .

Though  it would probably be that Mike Thornton still be ahead at the final count . Would the majority of the eliminated  Tory or Ukip vote have switched to hi or would they switch between themselves.

After all we are still looking at only a few thousand votes making the differences/

In the meantime Peter Black has convinced himself that this was an epic victory and his analysis  is laughable

What is important about this victory is that it shows that the Liberal Democrats cannot be easily written off despite the best efforts of our opponents. We showed that we can still win difficult by-elections and that we can do so whilst in government. It will not be easy to prise us out of our strongholds in 2015 and if the economy shows signs of recovery at that time we may even do better than hold our own.
It was a good by-election for UKIP as well. They harvested the protest votes that have benefited the Liberal Democrats in the past, but they did not have the ground campaign to capitalise properly. That will prove their weakness as they seek to win in other elections outside of next year's Europeans.
For Labour and the Tories, it was a disaster. The Conservatives saw themselves beated into third place by UKIP in a seat that by rights they should have won. It was a verdict on Cameron but more so on the quality of their candidate. However, there are now huge doubts that the Tories can ever do enough to win an overall majority in 2015. The pressure on Cameron internally will increase and that will impact even more on his party's electability.
The real loser however was Ed Miliband and Labour. Excuses that this is not natural Labour territory will not wash. The fact is that Labour came a good second in1994 and given the economic situation and the problems faced by the two governing parties, they should have done much better.

Peter Black Friday, March 01, 2013

Well I suppose Goal Difference is everything  but the idea that a Party can lose as many votes as Peters did and only win because the right vote split  and claim a major victory is taking spin to far.