The first by-election round in August was a bit of a sorry sight, with Liberal Democrats failing to stand in the majority of contests. In total three out of five elections, or sixty per cent, featured no candidate for any of our supporters to vote for. If they shopped around and found another box to put their cross in, then it just makes it all the harder in those places when we do get our act together. ALDC’s advice is to always stand a candidate. In many places that can be a difficult challenge, but there are very few places where it is absolutely impossible.
The good news was that our poor efforts at standing candidates led to a 50% success rate in places that we did! In Polegate North, our candidate Don Broadbent and the local Lib Dem team saw off the Independents and the Tories quite comfortably to hold the seat on Wealden District Council. Our second contested election was in Lincolnshire County’s Lincoln East division, where John Bishop and the team took a bit of a hit in vote-share terms, dropping eighteen per cent in a Labour gain from the Conservatives. Commiserations to John and the Lincolnshire Lib Dems.
Two of the remaining three elections took place in South Holland, the Tories held on in Fleet and the Independents held their seat in Long Sutton. Last, but not least, there was a change of hands in the Buttrills ward in the Vale of Glamorgan, where Plaid have managed to offset one of their tranche of lost seats in May by forty votes.
ALDC are including a ‘Best By-Election’ category in this year’s Campaigner Awards. Anyone can enter, please send your stories, photos, and artwork to our Campaigns Officer John Bridges. It looks like a quiet week next week as there have been no elections reported to ALDC so far. The very best of luck to all of our candidates and campaign teams out in the field.
Craig Whittallcraig.whittall@aldc.org