Wednesday, February 15, 2017

15FEB2017 - Update, UK By-elections

There is not much to update right now. Generally what was happening around the world, is continuing to happen, and what did happen, was, generally, what was expected. There are no big elections I'm following that are coming up until March.

On the 23rd of this month, the UK will hold by-elections in two seats. In Copeland Labour is defending against the Conservatives. The Tories could win here. This might be notable as it's a historic Labour area, but, in the 80's the seat was somewhat competitive, with the Tories being 4% / 2000 votes behind Labour in both 83 and 87. Of course, the 80's was a low point for Labour, and, the seat is trending to the right; so, in short, whoever wins it is not as big of a deal as it otherwise could be.

Stoke-on-Trent Central, however, is the by-election everyone is focusing on. Tristram Hunt, the Labour MP, and former historian, resigned to take over as Director of a museum. Hunt had won the seat with 12,200 votes, on 39.3%, over UKIP with 7,041 votes, on 22.7%. Paul Nuttall the new UKIP leader is running here, and there is some expectation that he should be able to win the seat; however, campaign issues and poor decisions have now put that in doubt.

No comments:

Post a Comment