Oldham West by-election liveblog

01.08: LABOUR HOLD!

Jim McMahon has won with a majority of over 10,835 – down from May, but with a healthier share of the vote.

Here’s the vote breakdown:

Labour – 17,322

UKIP – 6,487

Conservative – 2,596

Liberal Democrat – 1,024

Green – 249

Monster Raving Loony – 141

00.52: Labour’s vote in the more Asian areas of town has held up very well, it seems. UKIP are throwing around fairly obviously pointed accusations about postal votes which, to be honest, are best just ignored. They have no proof of anything untoward than “We thought we’d do better than this”. It is another exceptional defeat for UKIP’s expectation management.

00.48: UKIP are currently throwing a massive hissy fit for their complete and utter failure here tonight. Some are saying the result is not so far away. So I’m cracking this open:

00.33: Declaration has shifted forward a bit, and people are predicting 2am for the result. BBC North West’s reliable political editor Arif Ansari is reporting that Labour could get 60%.

Now don’t get me wrong, 60% is good, especially given the cataclysm some were predicting. But we got 60% in May. The first three by-elections under Miliband, in Labour seats, saw increases of about 10% points – including in Oldham East and Saddleworth in January 2011.

No one can go screaming their heads off about this result, thank God. It’s the last thing Labour need right now. But let’s not treat this as everything being on the right track; let’s consider it the gentlest warning we’re going to get.

00.21: Labour’s candidate, Jim McMahon, has just arrived at the count. I’ve not mentioned him yet, but he is, of course, incredibly important to this result.

Everyone I have spoken to who has campaigned in this by-election speaks of the McMahon factor. Leader of the council, he is not just well-known (people will mention his name, unprompted, on the doorstep), but well-liked too.

In fact, insiders have put it to me that he is worth as many as a couple of thousand of votes alone in Oldham. Whereas people are exasperated with Labour because of immigration, welfare and, yes, Jeremy Corbyn, they have said they will vote for us because of him.

That means if Labour’s majority is less than a couple of thousand, the victory can be attributed to McMahon – another candidate simply wouldn’t have won. Anything under 2,000 is, ahem, with the MarJim of Error.

So confident are Labour now, however, that we’re unlikely to be in that territory at all.

00.09: Postal vote figure I was given earlier was bit high. Actually 7,115 postal votes were cast, which is about a quarter of the total vote.

00.03: Given all the talk about a UKIP challenge, why are Labour on course to win tonight? It seems, other than it being a safe seat, there are two reasons.

The first is the ground campaign. Labour have more members than any other party, and can run one hell of a campaign – don’t forget we knocked on five million doors in the run-up to this May. When you go to the campaign room in Oldham West you are greeted with a wall covered, covered, in names of people who have been there to volunteer. Hundreds.

And the people you meet there are veterans of dozens of by-election campaigns in the past. They don’t necessarily need to know the seat; they just need to know how to win. They know that having someone spend an hour ringing up Labour-voting pensioners to offer them a lift to the polling station is just as important as an hour on the knocker.

UKIP, on the other hand, do not have a ground game. Their street stalls, or having Nigel Farage rock up to shopping centre, are not just not effective – it can barely even be called considered campaigning next to what Labour do.

40% turnout is higher than we expected, and it’s down to the people running those committee rooms. Until UKIP work that out, they will be a threat, but not a fatal one.

23.34: Turnout confirmed as 40.26% – 27,795 voters.

That’s good news for Labour. It’s miles higher than the below 30% I was told to expect earlier this week, and a fair improvement on the 35% earlier tonight. In the end, there are more Labour voters in this seat than the other parties – if people are voting, they are probably voting for us.

I’m told about 11,000 of the votes were postal. If Labour got 55% of that, and UKIP 30%, then we have a lead of around 3,000 before polling stations opened today.

Concerns about UKIP winning on the day are also starting to fade, as Labour appear to open up a lead in areas across the constituency. A Get Out The Vote success.

23.27: Yes, UKIP did actually play ‘Dreaming of a White Christmas’ in Royton today. While running an anti-immigration message, in a place that had race riots 14 years ago. Stay classy.

@Conorpope can confirm rumours that UKIP played “I’m dreaming of a white christmas” around Oldham today. Disgusting behaviour! 🙁

— Adam Wisdish (@adamwisdish95) December 3, 2015

23.20: Labour sources are eager to downplay talk bigging up the victory – and it doesn’t feel like expectation management.

There has been talk of “Pyongyang style” Labour votes, especially in postal votes, where there are rumours of six Labour votes to every UKIP one. This is not true. Labour do have a big lead on postals, but it is more like 55% to 30%.

In Royton, UKIP were apparently going around today playing ‘Dreaming of a White Christmas’ (no, really) – and I’ve been told that the Labour vote there has dropped by around 20%.

This, though, is at least better than reports earlier in the campaign, where I was told some areas were seeing a reduction in the Labour promise of between a third and a half. The only positive here was that the data canvassers had wasn’t considered reliable enough to say for certain.

23.03: Because of the nature of this seat, we can expect varying reports at different points of the night. 20% of the electorate is British Asian, and are largely condensed to communities in the centre of the seat.

Around that, all across the east of the seat, is white working class communities. It is among these voters that UKIP are taking chunks out of Labour support. In the west of the seat are more middle class areas, where UKIP are likely to be taking votes away from the Tories. Data guru (and former Labour staffer) Ian Warren has an excellent analysis of the constituency in greater depth in The Guardian.

Opening of ballot boxes is already well underway, and while 20 minutes ago Labour appeared to be smashing it, UKIP have now had a few boxes fall heavily in their favour. Don’t let anyone tell you it’s over yet.

22.40: “This by-election sounds fascinating and I am on the edge of my seat,” I hear you say, “But what time will I have to stay up until to find out the result?”

Well, imaginary reader, my latest information is that a declaration is expected at around 2.30am. Whether a slightly higher turnout than expected will push that back remains to be seen, but 2 to 3 o’clock has long been the ballpark.

22.28: My Oldham moles were all a bit edgier today than they were earlier in the week. How much of that is polling day nerves remains to be seen.

It seems turnout is a little higher than expected. On Tuesday, I was told we were looking at under 30% – now it seems 35% turnout is likelier.

Unfortunately, that seems to be down to a big turnout of the UKIP vote on the day. There are even whispers that more ‘Kippers turned out to the polling stations than Labour today. However, Labour’s strong postal ballot game should see us through.

22.19: Over two-thirds of readers are at least confident, then. But how much reason do they have for being so?

No one I have yet spoken to – not a single person – has stuck their neck out an predicted a UKIP victory tonight. That doesn’t always matter; no one in the Labour camp saw Galloway’s victory in Bradford West coming. But without any actual evidence actually pointing towardsa defeat tonight, I cannot say one is likely. Yes, there are jitters this evening, but we are looking at a Labour hold.

22.00: POLLS ARE CLOSED – AND ANOTHER BY-ELECTION LIVEBLOG IS UNDERWAY.

So, before we get down to the nitty gritty of filling the next five hours with pointless speculation, let’s fill a few minutes with meaningless expectation. In our survey this week we asked LabourList readers readers how confident they were about Labour’s chances in this by-election.

Despite reports of the UKIP challenge, I can reveal that 68% of readers who took part in the survey are in some way confident about Labour’s result tonight.

Of the 1,625 who voted, 23% are ‘very confident’ and 45% are ‘quite confident’. I look forward to the twibbons for that one.

On the other hand, 18% are ‘not confident’, and 11% put themselves in the ‘very concerned’ camp.