Inevitably after outcomes like yesterday’s by-election there are calls for a progressive alliance of some sort to be created whereby there is an arrangement so that the two of Lib Dem, Green or Labour parties in a specific seat stand aside so that the vote of the “progressive” can be maximised. This is the way it is argued that the FPTP system does not always work best for the Tories.

The only problem is that this assumes that LD voters would automatically make LAB their second preference. This is not necessarily the case as can be shown by what happened in real live results in elections where a second preference was possible from the May 6th group of elections.

Thanks to research by former BBC Head of Political Research, David Cowling, there were only five elections on that day which were contested by Labour, the Conservatives and the Lib Dems. These are featured in the chart above.

Firstly a large number of voters in these elections did not opt to use their second preference but of those who did the Cowling analysis finds the above splits. The Cambs/PBRO mayor had the smallest proportion of LD voters not going for LAB as their second choice – 25%.. Then, moving up the scale it was 38% in the Notts PCC election and more than 40% in the other three elections.

The way the Chesham & Amersham by-election played out shows that voters themselves who might support another party went for the LDs who established themselves as the main viable alternative. This was helped, of course, by what happened there at GE2019.

Mike Smithson

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