This week’s council by-elections
Four principal authority council by-elections this week, Only two Liberal Democrat candidates, but that is one up on the last time these seats were up.
Jamie Simpson was the Lib Dem candidate – thank you.
Thank you to Anne Williams for standing and putting the Liberal Democrats on the ballot paper.
Andrew Teale explains of the result:
The Llanuwchllyn by-election in Gwynedd … was due to Plaid councillor Alan Evans failing to sign his declaration of acceptance of office; I am informed that this is because Evans had a fairly serious bout of COVID, which would explain why he got over 95% of the vote in the resulting by-election.
For what all this means for the running total of council by-election results since the last May elections, see my council by-elections scorecard here.
These by-election results round-ups cover principal authority by-elections as it’s only those for which comprehensive results are available. But this week, these by-elections at the town/parish/community council level did catch my eye:
Understanding the opinion polls
For understanding what is happening in politics, by-elections have the advantage of being real votes in real ballot boxes. But the opinion polls have the advantage of trying to be a representative sample of voters, not just those in the places that happen to have by-elections. To understand the polls properly – and what they do and don’t really tell us – see my book, Polling UnPacked: The History, Uses and Abuses of Political Opinion Polls.
Get by-election results by email
If you sign up for my daily email with the latest pieces from this site, you’ll also get included as a little bonus the full set of council by-election results each week:
"*" indicates required fields
Leave a Reply