Although the Poulton North by-election happened several weeks ago, I think it’s worth commenting on the result and why I think such a result came about.
The by-election results:
Liberal Democrat 1,106
Labour 895
Conservative 190
UK Independence Party (James Ashington) 97
The first thing that is interesting is that Labour failed to gain this seat, something which I thought was a forgone conclusion. Either they ran a bad campaign, with their very young candidate going on holiday during the campaign not helping, or the Liberal Democrats had a great candidate and ran another trademark Lib Dem by-election campaign. I suspect both played a part.
The UKIP result was disappointing, as we did put a large amount of resources into the area, including postal vote letters, personalised leaflets and a visit from our North West MEP. We even got plenty of press coverage and had a fantastic candidate in James Ashington. What went wrong?
My theory is that given the history of the ward, where there are normally only three candidates, people are very reluctant to stray from the main three parties, to expand on this slightly, it shows that no matter how good your campaign is, unless you have a solid consistent campaign all year round, you will get very far. Voters really do need to feel that they can trust a party and a candidate with their vote, even if there is still little chance in winning.
A fair few people in UKIP still think they can turn up to an election the week before and win the seat. The Poulton North result proves that if you have that mentality, you will get very far.
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