One by-election swallow won’t make a political summer for Ed

By Mark Ferguson / @markfergusonuk

The Oldham result was a good one for Labour, there’s no doubt about that. Our vote rose by 10% from last May, and we received more votes yesterday on a 48% turnout than we did eight months ago on a 61% turnout. Despite the difficult circumstances that brought about the by-election, Labour were able to run a strong, successful and positive campaign. Both the party and our newest MP Debbie Abrahams should be congratulated for that.

One by-election swallow won’t make for a political summer though, and there’s a challenge hidden in last night’s results. One that Labour needs to focus on. The Lib Dem vote held up.

In fact, the Lib Dem vote share actually rose by 0.4% from to last May. This wasn’t supposed to happen. The Lib Dems are, after all, down to single figures in the national polls. They’re propping up a government that is implementing policies that are in many ways the polar opposite to the ones they were elected on last year.

Yet their vote still held up, under the intense scrutiny of a by-election campaign.

But there were thousands of Tory to Lib Dem switchers you’re saying (wondering perhaps how I could have missed that). That’s how their vote held up.

The key to Labour understanding the new political landscape lies in that last sentence.

Read it again – There. Were. Thousands. Of. Tory, To. Lib. Dem. Switchers.

Thousands.

That’s the only plausible reasoning behind the Lib Dem vote holding up whilst the Tory vote went through the floor. It’s also something which is a relatively new political phenomenon. Lib/Lab switchers (and vice-versa) are practically hard wired into our political system. The anti-Tory vote is potent, and can turn a safe Tory seat into a marginal with enough arm-twisting and tactical voting.

What yesterday showed is that anti-Tory alliance could potentially be replaced by an anti-Labour/pro-coalition one. Under either FPTP or AV, such an alliance could threaten Labour seats up and down the country – even into the safest seats in our heartlands.

Andy Burnham said last night that the Tory vote would be the story of the Oldham East by-election. He’s right, it should be.

And the story of Labour in 2011 needs to be how we understand that – and adapt.

Update: The central thrust of my argument is backed up by Anthony Wells at UK Polling Report:

“An increase in Labour support of about 10 points is very much in line with the national picture anyway, more interesting is the degree of tactical voting by Conservative supporters in favour of the Lib Dems, which made up for a large loss of Lib Dem support to Labour and allowed them to retain their vote share.

Populus’s poll already had 22% of 2010 Conservative voters switching to the Lib Dems, and presumably the actual figure was higher given the apparent shift in the vote since the pre-byelection polls.

If this became a common pattern at elections then it would have a significant effect, essentially reversing the pattern of tactical voting we’ve seen at the last four or five elections, especially if it also worked the other way with Liberal Democrat supporters being willing to back the Conservatives tactically.

This is not as outlandish as it seems – remember the remaining rump support for the Liberal Democrats is made up of those more positively inclined towards the Tories, in a forced choice question of whether they’d prefer a Labour or Tory government, they opt for a Tory government by 51% to 16%.”