Monday 19 September 2016

UKIP and LD council by-election performance

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
               -------       -------
                    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
               -------       -------
                    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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