Why the Rochdale By-election tells us nothing about the general election
The results are in…
George Galloway has won the Rochdale by-election.
Should we change our predictions for the general election?
Probably not…
There is very little these results tell us:
Workers Party — George Galloway: 39.7% (NEW)
Independent — David Tully: 21% (NEW)
Conservative — Paul Ellison: 12% (-19.2)
Labour — Azhar Ali: 7.7% (-43.9)
Lib Dem — Iain Donaldson: 7% (No change)
Simon Danczuk: 6.3% (-1.8% From Brexit Party)
George Galloway may cause a headache for Sunak and Starmer in the Commons but these results themselves are little cause for concern.
There was clearly a collapse in the Labour vote, but ultimately this was expected. After the accusations of antisemitism against Azhar Ali and Labour withdrawing their support, it became clear this by-election would not be predictive of..well..anything.
Not only was Ali removed as the Labour candidate, the Green Party also removed support for their candidate over islamaphobia.
As Ali was not backed by his party, it is impossible to gauge what percentage of Muslim voters are willing to abandon the party over Gaza.
Not much can be read into turnout for this by-election either. Despite being a deeply different contest, turnout here was 39.7%. In comparison, in the recent Wellingborough and Kingswood by-elections turnout was near identical at 38 and 37.1% respectively.
Perhaps the greatest surprise of this by-election was the performance of independent David Tully. Tully begun his campaign just 4 weeks ago, yet received more votes than Labour and the Conservatives combined. Unlike Galloway, Tully focused his campaign on local issues and provided an alternative for voters dissatisfied with the major parties.
It is also difficult to infer much from the fall in the Conservative vote share. The 19.2% drop was comparable to the 21.3% fall in Kingswood (far less than the 37.6% collapse in Wellingborough). However, as this was a Labour seat at the last election, there was less room for the Conservatives to fall.
All in all, this by-election tells us nothing about the next general election:
- Gaza will not sway most voters, few seats have such high Muslim populations.
- In a general election an independent will not take a fifth of the vote in each seat.
- Labour and the Greens will not withdraw their support from all their candidates.
Perhaps Galloway will inflict damage on Labour in the Commons, but this result tells us little. It is impossible to tell what the result would be had Labour picked another candidate.
