Quarter Three Local By-election Results 2014

Party	Number of candidates	Total vote	%	+/-  Q2	Average/ contest	+/-  Q2	+/- Seats
Conservative	64	24,875	28.1%	-1.5%	389	-271	-8
Labour	60	23,393	26.4%	-5.5%	390	-359	+6
LibDem	44	12,607	14.3%	+3.2%	287	-84	+1
UKIP	50	13,479	15.2%	+1.7%	270	-250	0
SNP*	1	595	0.7%	-1.0%	595	-297	-1
Plaid Cymru**	1	228	0.3%	+0.2%	228	-101	0
Green	34	3,758	4.2%	-2.1%	111	-259	+1
BNP	1	58	0.07%	-0.03%	58	-269	0
TUSC	7	130	0.1%	-0.2%	19	-50	0
Independent***	27	5,592	6.3%	+1.5%	207	-178	0
Other****	12	3,562	4.0%	+3.3%	297	+116	+1

* There was one by-election in Scotland.
** There were four by-elections in Wales.
*** There were six contests with independent clashes this quarter.
**** 'Other' this quarter comprised Patriotic Socialist (2), Blue (13), Tower Hamlets First (762, 744, 726), Mebyon Kernow (217 and 58), Liberal (121), It's Our County (835), English Democrats (20 and 43), British Democrat (95), and Christian (33 votes).

88,457 votes were cast over 64 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. You can compare these with Quarter Two 2014's results here.

Okay. It gets real from here on in. A number of pollsters predict that Labour will get more seats but lose the popular vote - a scenario born out in this quarter. But the forecasting capacity of local council by-elections come with some serious caveats. Firstly, it's mostly hardcore voters that tend to turn out for them. As a group they are older than the average voter, more likely to be swayed by local factors in these contests and, if you follow the polls, older voters more predisposed to be Conservative (and UKIP) voters. It is reasonable to assume that, if anything, local by-election results give them a disproportionate boost not found in the general population.

Second, as noted on many previous occasions the greater the choice and the fact these elections "don't matter" put a downward pressure on the vote shares of the two main parties. In a general election the direction of voting travel will favour them, though not as much as is usually supposed. UKIP's vote, for example, is unlikely to collapse.

Here's another hypothesis. As we get nearer to the general election, local by-elections will start behaving more like general elections. The lure of protest voting and saliency of potholes down the lane diminish as voters start considering who they want to run the government.

So, by-elections disproportionately favour Tory and UKIP votes. And the impending general election will impact results more as we get closer to the date. We shall see.