Local Council By-Election Results 2013

Party	Number of candidates	Total vote	%	Average/ contest	+/- Seats
Conservative	330	139,982	26.4%	424	-28
Labour	294	171,427	32.3%	583	+25
LibDem	230	62,413	11.8%	271	-2
UKIP	225	75,873	14.3%	337	+12
SNP*	15	14,507	2.7%	967	-4
Plaid Cymru**	9	2,320	0.4%	258	0
Green	114	17,174	3.2%	151	-1
BNP	20	1,343	0.3%	67	0
TUSC	33	2,040	0.4%	62	0
Independent***	120	30,513	5.8%	254	-1
Other****	64	11,763	2.2%	184	+4

*There were 15 by-elections in Scotland.
**There were 11 by-elections in Wales, nine of which were contested by Plaid Cymru.
***There were multiple independent clashes this year.
****There were multiple clashes in the same contests.

Overall 529,355 votes were cast over 340 individual local authority (tier one and tier two) contests. Fractions are rounded to one decimal place for percentages, and the nearest whole number for averages.

Discounting the two main parties for the moment, both LibDem and UKIP percentages are well within the ranges consistently given by this year's opinion polling. However, it is worth noting that this is on the basis of their contesting far fewer wards than the Conservatives and Labour so their support here may well be inflated by the well-known "distortions" of second order elections. i.e. Voters are more likely to support alternative parties when their vote "doesn't matter". This is certainly the case with independent candidates. 'Others' (excluding anyone who stood on a party label) polled 1.1% in the 2010 general election.

The interesting thing about the Labour/Tory contest at the top of the tables is that while their vote share is depressed thanks to the large number of alternative candidates standing, the margin between them is roughly the average indicated by polling. As this is a poll of over half-a-million people one can reasonably assume this is a real indicator of the gap that exists.

Next year, especially in the second quarter, I would expect UKIP to do better seeing as local election day falls at the same time as European polling day. As we saw this year, parties tend to roll local by-elections into other polling days if they can to capitalise on wider political awareness and campaign momentum.