May the wind be at your back.
OPEN IMMIGRATION SKEPTICS TAKE SECOND PLACE IN UK BY-ELECTION
The United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) has yet again taken second place in a by-election in the north of England following the death of Labour Member of Parliament Paul Goggins.
Results from the Wythenshawe and Sale East by-election in Greater Manchester came in moments ago, with the Labour Party expectedly taking first place with 55 percent of the vote share, with UKIP second on 17.8 percent and the Conservative Party behind them on 14.3 percent.
The Liberal Democrat Party, the junior party in Britain’s coalition government, performed embarrassingly (as expected), with just 4.9 percent of the vote.
The results will also concern the Conservative Party, which has been pushed into third place yet again, following similar performances in the South Shields (May 2013), Eastleigh (Feb 2013), Manchester Central (Nov 2012), and Barnsley (March 2011) by-elections.
But while UKIP has been attracting support from the disillusioned Conservative Party backers since its inception, it has now been luring voters from the left, too—a fact that the Labour Party has clearly sought to address by hurrying along the dates of certain by-elections (as the incumbent party) and relying heavily on postal votes to tip the balance.
The postal turnout in today’s by-election was 40 percent, and the method has accounted for over half of all votes in previous by-elections.
UKIP’s Nigel Farage argues that the historically short campaigning period (only three days, in this case) means that the election is basically a “stitch-up” for Labour, whose activists flood the streets to help people fill out and file their postal ballots.