The Establishment In Chaos

The Rochester and Strood by-election has thrown the British establishment into a state of panic. The by-election was triggered when Mark Reckless switched from the Tories to UKIP. In yesterday’s election UKIP won 42.1% of the vote whilst the three main parties all lost large percentages of their vote. The Tories lost 14%, Labour 12% and the Lib Dems 16%, for the Lib Dems it was their worst ever result as they lost their deposit, got less than 1% of the vote and finished in fifth, behind the Greens who got 4.2% of the vote.

Obviously this does not bode well for the main parties’ prospects in May. The next General Election could be the most important election in living memory as six parties vie for success. UKIP’s unique ability to attract voters from the three main parties really makes it difficult to understand what will happen at the next election. Although the result in Rochester certainly seems like an earthquake, it doesn't necessitate that similar events will happen in the General Election. Voters act differently in by-elections to Generals, Labour didn’t win any by-elections from the Conservatives from 1997 to 2012, but they still won Generals in 2001 and 2005. A combination of factors are the reason for by-elections looking different to General Elections. Firstly, opposition voters tend to be more motivated to go out and show support for their candidates. Since by-elections have no effect on who forms the government (apart from very rare circumstances), the incumbent party supporters simply are not motivated enough. Most importantly is that supporters of the incumbent party can use by-elections as a way to protest vote. This is certainly part of the reason for UKIP’s success in Rochester & Strood, many people are angry with the Tories and so voted for UKIP to scare them into taking tougher approaches to immigration and the European Union. However in the May election I believe that Rochester will switch back to the Tories.

As a political junkie I am excited by what the implications of May’s General Election will be for years to come. Take a look at the graph and table I created below. As you can see the combined vote of Labour and the Tories has declined over the past 70 years, albeit very slowly. If you include the various incarnations of the Lib Dems, most of the decline disappears. The combined vote of the three main parties has only dipped below 90% on two occasions (2005 and 2010). How this graph changes in 2015 will be fascinating as the Greens, UKIP and the SNP erode support from the main parties.