I've woken up to find that the Green Party of England & Wales (with Hannah Spencer as their candidate) have won the Gorton & Denton pretty comfortably, beating ReformUK Ltd and pushing Labour into third place.
It really was (as indicated beforehand) a three way contest, with both Tory's & LibDems picking up a very small % of the vote.
@ChrisMayLA6 some interesting takeaways. Did the Greens canibalise the Workers Party vote and some of Labour while Reform ate the Tories and also some of Labour?
Also, I just had someone tell me today "they only won because of voter fraud" not sure how that works so soon after a count, and with VoterID now a thing, but the disinformation machine seems to be in high gear already!
@ChrisMayLA6 beyond a thrashing....a veritable landslide, really....
@ChrisMayLA6 It was a huge error of judgement by both Burnham and Starmer to stage this fight in public. They both lost.
Although I think this is what many voters may have reacted against; the depiction of the by-election being an arena to conduct a national party confrontation - many may well have appreciated the winning candidate's local focus?
@ChrisMayLA6 I think it would be more accurate to say Labour lost it but most people aren't racists. Reform have shown very clearly that they are. "Hope not hate" is a great slogan.
@ChrisMayLA6 LibDems who are Social Liberals vote tactically, not tribally. They understand who (and what) the enemy is.
@ChrisMayLA6 Not to jump on the post hoc bandwagon, but it would seem the large number of polled 'undecideds' went Green fairly late.
Or quietly had already decided?
@ChrisMayLA6 Pure speculation, of course, but I would plump for people waiting until quite late (a) to be sure who was most likely to beat Reform, and (b) putting their trust in a novel party/candidate.
For (b), Hannah Spencer did an excellent job, whereas Angelina Stogia seemed to have nothing to say for herself, and was swamped by London spinners.
I think the delay in her arrival on the campaign as she was attending a course on plastering, actually may have played pretty well.... the issue will be how many voters did (as you say) wait to commit to a tactical vote, and how many actually cross over on political grounds?
@ChrisMayLA6 Well, Rob Ford now has plenty of material on his doorstep for evaluating those questions (and I’m sure he can sell the detailed version twice over to Labour and the Greens)
Let us hope we can maintain this momentum, especially given that this is going to be a marathon and not a sprint.
indeed, momentum over the next three years will be everything
@ChrisMayLA6 There was actually a higher turnout than the last General election by a few hundred. Manchester always had relatively low turnouts generally.
aha, really, I assumed it was low (as usual) due to the relative size of the majorities..... I'll correct the post
