I just think it's a bit hard to tell how much is that and how much is down to other factors like Labour's candidate being an established local presence, the lack of an independent, etc.
I'm never against people having fun with election results
Friends don't let friends overanalyse single council by-elections that are very likely outliers.
Unless it becomes part of a pattern, it is just a single datapoint, which cannot outweigh all other evidence without good reason.
It is lower in Hull, but still lower in the rest of the East Riding than the other parts of Yorkshire.
I'd wondered that too, but apparently not. Just a collective shrug.
The East Mids' attachments to England and UK are at the stronger end, though, so I guess that's where identities lie.
Also some evidence of how competing identities are at play here - very little attachment to county Durham in the Tees area, suggesting the Teesside identity is more powerful?
Will hopefully explore more fully one day... (I'd have loved to do historic boundaries too, but not easy coding wise).
The East Midlands continual indifference to anything is a great recurring theme to our identity studies...
Always love exploring our sub-'national' identities, and a happy St Piran's Day to Cornwall!
A few surprises, and a few have asked, but our previous study on regional identity found the figure is around 40% for just "Yorkshire".
Very surprisingly, not that different! Our previous study on regional identity did this, and it was about 40%.
It does surprise me a little, but we do only use "very strong" to show identity, Yorkshire does have very low "not at all" rates, so perhaps some understating the strength of their feeling a little?
Merseyside is an interesting one, as it does seem to be dragged down by certain areas (St Helens).
Surprisingly not! We got about 40% when asking Yorkshire in a previous study on regional identity, so there doesn't appear to be a significant difference.
Ultimately, when communicating to non-expert audiences, as I do every day, it is more important to convey things clearly in a way that is not inaccurate than to be 100% technically accurate but confusing. Having a single easily memorable guide is preferable to chucking out various competing figures.
Plus, as is often neglected, as a hypothetical question, it has an additional margin of error beyond typical variation. A whole electorate VI poll the day before polling day would be unlikely to be 100% accurate.
Also probably helps that quite a number of Lib Dem activists are able to sincerely go "snap - we hate Nick Clegg too".
Yep, the pattern of other votes is now distinctly right-wing, in contrast to last autumn.
Seems margin of error to me. The MRP last September was a 30% constituency right share vs 44% nationally, the by-election was 31% in the constituency vs a 42/43% national share. Seems reasonably consistent.
But in Gorton and Denton, the right-of-centre vote was basically unified behind a single party, while here it is split between two parties (and to a lesser extent others).
I do think there's a good chance of it happening to some degree eventually, but Labour has not currently created the preconditions for it to be sufficiently asymmetric in their favour (as per 2019 for the Tories).
That's not to say reconsolidation can't happen again, but I'm not sure there's much beyond a superficial similarities. Plus, I don't see it happening any time soon, given the two-party surges in 2017 and 2019 were artificially instigated by elections, rather than a return to a genuine two-partyism.
Remain unconvinced of this comparison. Mid-2019 was far more mono-causal, the breakdown in Con/Lab dominance was a matter of weeks (rather than more than a year) and the underlying attitudes towards the parties were quite different.
No, will seek it out, ta.
But ultimately what all constitutional questions come down to for a government: it's a shit system, and we like/want it that way.
"But we need someone to clean up badly drafted legislation"
"Have you considered not badly drafting legislation? E.g. by giving the Commons sufficient resources?"
"Umm. So do you think STV or D'Hondt for the powerless upper house?"
Much more coherent than all the people who want a Lords but think it shouldn't be able to overrule the Commons. Guys, let me introduce you to this thing called unicameralism.
It's like every time I read some Lords reform proposals that amount to "let's elect it and remove its veto power". I'm just like, this isn't serious, what's the actual point here, what's the net improvement, how does it connect to a wider theory of state and government?
The whole thing just reeks of nobody stepping back and actually asking "what do we want here?" Like, we're using up the once every few decade local govt reform opening to slapdashedly clip together LAs like puzzle pieces with some vaguely defined goals?
If anything, too many Labour councillors were going to be elected in May.
It's quite an odd fixation purely as the Danish Social Democrats just aren't that successful? Like, within the party family, they just aren't that exceptional. The Swedish Social Democrats, who aren't that liberal on immigration themselves, are in a far, far better position.
Out: Kerning
Yep. There was a very flawed logic to the Tory line of thinking, but Labour's strategy is several contradictory ideas working against each other. It comes back to a previous point about "If Labour want to benefit from bloc-based voting, they do actually have to signal they are part of a bloc."
And the rhetoric wasn't meaningless to stop Reform, it was actively encouraging it. The Tories actively raised the salience of immigration, an issue on which Reform UK had the most trust. Voters who felt it was a major issue thus voted for the party they trusted most on it.
