Quarter Two By-Election Results 2021

This quarter saw 812,867 votes were cast over 361 local authority contests. All percentages are rounded to the nearest single decimal place. For comparison you can view Quarter One 2020 results here.

* There were three by-elections in Scotland
** There were 15 by-elections in Wales
*** There were 25 contests with Independent clashes
**** Others this quarter consisted of the Andover Alliance (249), BNP (55), Christian People's Alliance (158, 80, 115), Communist Party of Britain (36, 33), Coventry Citizen's Party (194), For Britain (99, 49, 34, 12, 11, 14, 69), For the People Not the Party (88), Freedom Association (49), Heritage Party (49, 52, 45), Hart Community Campaign (1,417), Holland on Sea and Eastcliff Matters (118), Indeed (61), Independence for Scotland (14), Kingston Independent Residents Group (378, 378), Lewisham People Before Profit (303, 219, 188), Liberal (383), Official Monster Raving Loony (110, 8, 16, 12, 13, 6, 14, 8, 2, 6, 2, 3, 7, 1, 1), Propel (16, 19), Reform (40, 53, 112, 40, 35, 88, 105, 70, 89, 89, 42, 387, 7), Residents for Guildford and Villages (660, 109) Residents for Uttleford (892, 361), SDP (16, 17, 30), Rochford District Residents (788), Skegness Urban District Society (121), Tendring First (140), Taking the Initiative Party (219, 251, 100, 36), TUSC (47, 72, 32, 33, 56, 551, 58, 77, 149, 38, 30, 40, 9, 117, 34, 55, 58, 27, 345, 82, 87, 154, 111, 91, 7, 58, 40), UKIP (48, 105, 124, 19, 142, 35, 55, 384, 63, 120), Wales Needs Champions (34), We Matter Party (37), Welsh Independence Party (121) Women's Equality Party (149), Workers Party of Britain (58, 13, 21, 45), Yorkshire Party (397, 136), Young People's Alliance (52)

The second quarter's results are in! The first proper quarter since early 2020, and so eagle eyed readers might have spotted the comparators are with that and the quarter from two years ago. This will continue until this time next year when we have "normal" results to measure against.

And how are they looking? While the gap between the Conservatives and Labour is large, interestingly it's not as big as what the polls are showing. And remember, as older people are more likely to turn out for council by-elections than working age age groups the Tories have a significant advantage here. Therefore, I'd be slightly concerned if I was a Tory election wonk and mildly optimistic if the fates had delivered me to Keir Starmer's LOTO.

Anything else? The LibDems have returned to their recent historic levels of polling, but we'll see if this changes post Chesham and Amersham. The Greens are putting in a strong challenge too. At 7.6% this is the Green's best performance in a quarter since this blog has tracked by-elections, and it builds nicely on their previous best in December 2019. A slow build but they are the coming electoral force in local politics. We'll have to see if they can capitalise on this and discontent with the other parties over the rest of this year.

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