Today's Rochester and Strood by-election
Today is the Rochester and Strood by-election. After every by-election I see the same questions and I write essentially the same post. Given that, I thought I might as well write it before the result: whatever happens in the Rochester and Strood by-election it won't tell us anything we didn't already know about public opinion.
By-elections are very unusual beasts. They are fought with huge intensity and media attention, but with very little direct consequence - the government will still be the government the next day, it's only one single seat that can change hands. They also often have unusual local circumstances - in this case a defecting member of Parliament. When a by-election behaves in line with the national polls, it doesn't tell us anything we didn't already know. When it behaves differently to the national polls, it's probably because of the unique factors of by-election.
Assuming that the by-election polls from Ashcroft, ComRes and Survation are all correct and Mark Reckless wins tonight's by-election we'll probably see lots of comments tomorrow about UKIP doing well and being a threat to the Conservatives. I'd also expect lots of comments about how Labour didn't win when they should have. Plus perhaps some comments about the derisory vote the Lib Dems will almost certainly get. Perhaps they'll finish behind the Greens or even the Loonies or random independents.
To take those one at a time, UKIP are not likely to do as well nationwide in a general election as in a by-election where they have an incumbent MP, so this won't tell us anything about their likely level of support come the general election - nor will it help answer the question of how concentrated their vote will be, and how well it will translate into returning MPs to Westminster. In terms of Labour, this is the sort of seat that an opposition doing really well in the polls and headed for a landslide win could reasonably expect to win... but we don't need a by-election to tell us that Labour are not soaring ahead in the polls, and are not currently in a position that would translate to a landslide win. We already know that they are struggling to maintain first place in the polls and are seeing the anti-government vote split between them and other parties. As for the Liberal Democrats, the embarrassment of finishing lower than 4th place and losing their deposit is no longer anything new for them and doesn't tell us anything new about the dire straights they find themselves in.
The other thing I invariably say after explaining how by-elections tell us virtually nothing about wider public opinion is that it doesn't make the result any less important. A lot of politics is about the press narrative, about Westminster personalities and morale and in all those senses tonight's result really does matter - if UKIP do really well it should keep UKIP's momentum rolling, help them persuade voters they are a viable choice at the election. Perhaps we'll see them get a boost in the polls from the publicity. Perhaps it will give the Conservative party's morale a knock, perhaps encourage another defection(s) and turn the media pressure back onto David Cameron after an unpleasant few weeks for Ed Miliband. By-elections are very important - but because of their effect on the narrative, not because they really tell us much about wider public opinion.
