The Eastleigh By-election

I'm a great one for statistics and the recent by-election (admit it: do you know where in Hampshire Eastleigh is? It's a suburb of Southampton, basically) had made me curious about the voting turn-out and the results.

	2010			2013
Party	Votes	Share of Vote	Share of Electorate	Votes	Share of Vote	Share of Electorate	Change from Previous
Liberal Democrat	24966	46.53%	32.25%	13342	32.06%	16.93%	-46.56%
Conservative	21102	39.33%	27.26%	10559	25.37%	13.40%	-49.96%
Labour	5153	9.60%	6.66%	4088	9.82%	5.19%	-20.67%
UKIP	1933	3.60%	2.50%	11571	27.80%	14.68%	498.60%
Other	496	0.92%	0.64%	2056	4.94%	2.61%
Total	53650		69.30%	41616		52.80%	-22.43%
Electorate	77417			78818			1.81%

Source Wikipedia.

The first thing you notice is the massive drop in turnout, more than 20%, even though the electorate has increased slightly. This gives lie to the supposition that immigration issues, which UKIP campaigned on, have made people vote who hadn't previously. It may well have turned people off voting. In more general terms, though, you can see that the successful candidate only represents one in six of the electorate. Democracy in action.

Secondly, you can see the massive increase in votes for UKIP, which has been made much of in the press. If even half of the UKIP vote had gone to the Conservatives, they would have got nearly 40% and won, so it's easy to see why Ed might be smiling at this point. However, the Labour party might have to deal with UKIP on their own turf.