Ahead of the Wythenshawe and Sale East by-election next Thursday (triggered by the death of Labour MP Paul Goggins), some in Westminster have been excitedly speculating that UKIP could win its first Westminster seat. Toby Young, for instance, recently wrote:
It will be enormously helpful if Ukip wins the forthcoming by-election in the constituency of Wythenshawe and Sale East. That is not as far-fetched as you might think, as Mike Smithson points out in this post for PoliticalBetting.com. Since 2011, Ukip have come second in five by-elections – Eastleigh, South Shields, Barnsley Central, Rotherham and Middlesbrough – and the party did well in local elections in Wythenshawe and Sale East in 2012. Last night, Lord Ashcroft tweeted that betting on the outcome of the by-election had been temporarily suspended, suggesting that the bookies were busy recalculating the odds of a Ukip victory after several large bets had been placed on precisely that outcome.
But judging by the poll just published by the prolific Lord Ashcroft, they’ll be weighing the Labour vote next week, not counting it. The survey of 1,009 voters (conducted between 3 and 5 February) puts the party in first place on 61 per cent, up 17 points since the general election and 46 points ahead of UKIP.
Farage’s party has more than quadrupled its vote share since 2010, leapfrogging the Tories and the Lib Dems (who will struggle to keep their deposit) in the process, but so fast has its rise been that this is no longer considered surprising. After finishing second in five by-elections since 2011, the bar is now set much higher.
Ashcroft rightly notes that “A lot can change in a week – especially the last week of a by-election campaign – and any poll is a snapshot not a forecast”. But it’s now clear that Wythenshawe isn’t going to provide UKIP with the parliamentary breakthrough it craves.
Content from our partners
Related
