There were nine by-elections in total on Thursday. Seven were spread out across England with one each in Scotland and Wales so after celebrating our two gains I decided that they represented a big enough cross section to do some analysis.
Across the seats we contested the average increase in our vote was 12.3% and our total vote share was an impressive 24.7%.
However, we only contested six of the by-elections. 1/3rd of the elections went ahead without any Liberal Democrat on the ballot. Unfortunately when you add in these three 0% figures our vote increase comes down to 8.2% and our vote share down to 16.5%
In the 2016 local elections the media glossed over the fact that we had the biggest number of net gains and were the only party to gain control of a council. But what they couldn’t gloss over was the fact that we’d pushed UKIP back into 4th place with our vote share. LAB 31%, CON 30%, LDEM 15%, UKIP 12%. Wherever the graphs and tables were shown it was clear that the Lib Dems were back.
Everyone is aware of the electoral reasons for always putting up a candidate but it really does matter for another reason which I will show you below.
I took those three 0% election results and gave them last place LDEM vote shares of 2.2%, 2.4% and 4.6% and then I re ran the vote share calculation. This time our vote share was 17.5% a 1% increase
This is the best reason why we must ALWAYS field a candidate, especially in the 2017 local elections.
Thankfully deposits are not required for local elections but some local parties don’t have enough members willing to stand to field candidates across all of their wards.
I know a lot of Lib Dem members don’t want to be councillors, especially if (like me) the thought of standing for election fills you with dread. All I did in my ward in 2016 was go out with the chair of my local party to gather my nomination signatures. That’s it. No leafletting, no door knocking and thus no chance of winning that ward, but as a result I delivered an 11% vote share to our national calculation instead of 0%.
Even if you hate the idea please stand, ask to be placed in a ward we have no chance of winning. Demand the local chair helps you gain your nomination signatures and then do literally nothing else, but please put your name on the ballot.
If we cover every ward in 2017 all of those small, ‘deposit losing’ percentages will add up with the (hopefully) brilliant results from our target wards. I think we can set a goal of clearly pulling away from UKIP, a stretch goal of clawing our way back to a 20% vote share and who knows? If we are fantastically lucky, maybe we will meet one of the big two parties coming the other way.
The data for the calculations was taken from Britain Elects results.
* James Cole is a member of the Liberal Democrats in the South East Region
