Local Council By-Elections May 2014

Party	Number of candidates	Total vote	%	+/-  April	Average/ contest	+/-  April	+/- Seats
Conservative	99	70,345	30.1%	-2.9%	711	+358	-2
Labour	95	72,754	31.1%	+5.6%	766	+483	-1
LibDem	72	27,810	11.9%	+0.4%	386	+109	-1
UKIP	54	31,871	13.6%	+0.4%	590	+378	+4
SNP*	4	3,293	1.4%	+1.4%	823	+823	-1
Plaid Cymru**	0			-3.4%			0
Green	40	16,059	6.9%	+5.6%	401	+277	+3
BNP	1	327	0.1%	+0.1%	327	+327	0
TUSC	13	896	0.4%	+0.4%	69		0
Independent***	23	9,580	4.1%	-7.0%	416	+59	-1
Other****	4	638	0.3%	-2.5%	160	-169	-1

* There were four by-elections in Scotland.
** There was one by-elections in Wales.
*** There were five independent clashes in May - four in one contest, three in another.
**** 'Other' this month consisted of Scottish Christian (63), Inds for Bristol (354), NF (80), Respect (141).

Overall, 233,573 votes were cast over 103 individual local (tier one and tier two) authority contests. All percentages are rounded to the nearest single decimal place. For comparison see April's results here.

With the majority of by-elections taking place on the same day as the local and European contests, as per tradition the parties have rolled as many by-elections into last Thursday as possible. Hence the large number of votes cast, hence the boosts to everyone's vote average.

Just a methodological note before we go any further. This results were tracked down by the Vote UK Forums, home for the discerning electoral cretin. However, in their results they have counted double elections (i.e. where you have two votes for two vacant seats) just once whereas I have twice where both vacancies were by-elections. Hence the discrepancy between my contest tally and theirs.

Without further ado, two significant things jump out. Labour won May's popular vote - just - despite fielding fewer candidates than the Tories. But to my mind of greater importance is the absence of a UKIP surge. Sure, they're up four seats but their momentum did not translate to a large increase of their vote in percentage terms. Average is a different story. That's a high. Speaking of highs, this is the best Green performance yet seen in my by-election coverage in terms of averages, votes polled and seats won. In the wave of hype enveloping UKIP, the quiet consolidation of the Greens is passing almost unnoticed.

For some reason, I couldn't enter the +/- figure for TUSC, but as they didn't stand last month it's easy to work out. However, to stand 13 candidates and poll under 900 votes is a pretty poor effort. Still, as it disproportionately pinches votes from Labour than other parties the comrades will no doubt be satisfied their interventions probably cost it three or four seats this time.