Eleven principal council by-elections were held across Britain yesterday. The two contests in Aylesbury Vale resulted in two Liberal Democrat wins. Peter Agoro was victorious in Southcourt ward, polling 42.3% to secure a comfortable majority of 317 votes as UKIP finished second. Labour, who were defending the seat, saw their vote share drop by 12.2% in finishing third. There was more good news as Anders Christensen held for the Liberal Democrats in Gatehouse, winning with a slender majority of 28 ahead of the UKIP candidate. These two victories see the party’s representation on Aylesbury Vale DC increase to 17 councillors.
There were also gains for Plaid Cymru in Carmarthenshire and UKIP in Stamford North, both coming from Independents. The Liberal Democrat candidates polled 11% and 11.2% respectively in these contests.
The Conservatives won over 50% of the vote to hold seats on Broxtowe BC and Windsor & Maidenhead UA, with the party also polling over 75% to hold in the New Forest DC seat of Bransgore & Burley.
In addition, Labour held seats on Sunderland MB and Halton BC, despite small vote share drops in both elections, of 3% and 2.4% respectively.
The SNP held their seat in the Argyll & Bute ward of South Kintyre, winning 62.2% of the vote as the Conservatives vote share crumbled by 41.4% from the ward’s last election in 2012. There was also a gain for the SNP on Moray UA, as they won 728 first preference votes to gain a seat from Labour in Elgin City North.
Liberal Democrat candidates were fielded in eight of this weeks elections, with 6 of these candidates polling over 10%, an improvement on two weeks ago when only one out of six gained over 5% of the vote. However only three candidates secured vote share increases from their ward’s last election and in two of these cases, Liberal Democrat candidates were not fielded in the previous contest.
In other elections, there was also a gain for the Liberal Democrats from the Independents on Rawcliffe Parish council in York, with the party now holding 4 of the 9 seats on the council. Also in addition to his victory in the DC by-election in Southcourt ward, Peter Agoro was also elected to Aylesbury Town concil, having once again gained a seat from Labour in the process.
Click here to view the complete by-election results for this week