THE AMERICA ONE NEWS
Jun 2, 2025  |  
0
 | Remer,MN
Sponsor:  QWIKET 
Sponsor:  QWIKET 
Sponsor:  QWIKET: Elevate your fantasy game! Interactive Sports Knowledge.
Sponsor:  QWIKET: Elevate your fantasy game! Interactive Sports Knowledge and Reasoning Support for Fantasy Sports and Betting Enthusiasts.
back  
topic
The Economist
The Economist
26 Oct 2023


NextImg:Do by-election results in Britain matter?
Britain | Not that by the by

Do by-election results in Britain matter?

Our model suggests they should not be dismissed as aberrations

Political superlatives were being thrown around like confetti on October 20th, after two by-election victories for Labour in safe Tory seats. In Mid Bedfordshire Labour set a new record for overturning the largest absolute majority in a by-election. In Tamworth the party bettered its huge by-election victory in the same town in 1996, just a year before Tony Blair’s landslide general-election win. Is history set to repeat itself?

image: The Economist

Tory optimists say it is unwise to extrapolate from by-election results. Turnout is poor: among the 110 by-elections since 1992 just 43% of the constituency electorate have shown up, on average, compared with 64% for general elections. Of the two dozen seats gained by a party at by-elections between 1992 and 2019, half were lost at the subsequent general election.

To find out if by-elections do act as bellwethers for future general elections, The Economist built a simple model to predict a party’s general-election vote share in a given seat based on its performance in a by-election in that same seat. As a rule of thumb, roughly half of the change in a party’s vote share is carried over from by-elections to general elections (see chart). That suggests the Tories may not be penalised by voters quite so badly in Tamworth and Mid Bedfordshire at the next election; as things stand, they may well regain both seats.

But our model also suggests that it is wrong to discount by-elections. Some parties, most obviously the Liberal Democrats, do outperform in by-elections. But the victories for Labour this month corroborate what the 17-percentage-point gap in the national polls indicates: the party is on course for victory. 

For more expert analysis of the biggest stories in Britain, sign up to Blighty, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter.

This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline "Not that by the by"

Is the Windsor framework in Northern Ireland working?

The new rules soften the Irish Sea border, but do not make it disappear

Britain must overhaul the way it approves infrastructure

Electricity pylons will be the next battleground


The rise and fall of class dysphoria in Britain

British politicians have stopped pretending when it comes to class