A speaker at the UKIP conference last weekend claimed 31 local authority by-election gains. No timescale was mentioned, but even so this sounded like a dubious statistic. So I went to the most independent record of by-election performance that I know in order to tot up UKIP's gains and losses since 2012 when there were the last major local election campaigns:
Gains Losses
2012 0 0
2013 14 3
2014 10 7
2015 9 10
2016 (so far) 5 7
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38 27
So the party has made a net gain of 11 over the five years in principal (county, borough and district) authority by-elections, but their major successes came in 2013, since when their performance has steadily declined. Anticipating the next question, here is the LibDem equivalent:
Gains Losses
2012 14 9
2013 15 19
2014 15 8
2015 9 7
2016 (so far) 17 2
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70 45
Apart from 2013, we made net gains in every year of the last five, and the pace has increased markedly in 2016.
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