UK: By-election gain for governing Conservatives an oddity
Posted by Paul, 2017-02-23
In Thursday's by-elections, the UK Conservatives picked up Copeland from Labour, a seat in the northwest of England, a rare gain for a governing party in the United Kingdom.
The historic strangeness of this result can't be overstated: Labour had held the seat continuously, either as Copeland or its forerunner constituency Whitehaven since 1935.
Matt Singh's blog Number Crunchr Politics outlined more reasons why this result is historically unusual: beyond being the first by-election gain for a governing party in the UK since 1982, it's also the first time that a governing party gained a seat without a narrow (less than 3 percentage points) victory in the previous election or any other strange circumstances (like a change in the party system or a floor crossing) since 1878.
On that occasion, the Conservatives picked up Worcester from the Liberals-- who promptly won the seat back in the following general election.