Would the Tories have held onto this seat with AV?
Could the new system dilute the UKIP threat?
I don’t usually pay much attention to local by-election results but this one from last night might cause some concerns in Tory ranks. A seat in Tunbridge Wells is lost following a huge surge in the UKIP vote while the Lib Dem support was not much down on what happened on general election day last year.
It doesn’t take a skilled mathematician to work out that if the election had been under AV then the blues might have held on. Between them UKIP and the Tories got 57.7% of the vote – well ahead of the Lib Dem 43.3%.