Crewe And Nantwich
With just ten days until polling day, campaigning for the by-election in Crewe and Nantwich is now in full swing with the Conservative party clearly sensing that victory is possible.
An ICM poll of 1,004 people by telephone in Crewe and Nantwich for the Daily Mail put the Conservatives on 43% while Labour on 39% and the Liberal Democrats on 16%. However, once again I am not convinced that this poll will reflect the final result we shall see on the night.
As is the case with most parliamentary by-elections, a diverse range of candidates have chosen to stand including UKIP, the Green party, and the Monster Raving Loony Party. The ICM poll does not appear to take into account ‘other parties’ running. Therefore, even on a reduced turnout I doubt we will see any candidate exceed 40% of the vote.
What’s more, it perhaps goes without saying that the Liberal Democrats will poll better than they would tend to in a general election because at a by-election they are able to pile their national resources and activists into one seat. At the last General Election the Lib Dems took 18.6% of the vote. I expect that they will not only increase their vote but also their overall share by picking up a good few anti-Tory and disgruntled Labour voters.
Labour’s choice of candidate may also be crucial for their party’s chances of holding the seat. The selection of Gwyneth Dunwoody’s daughter, Tamsin means that not only will she gain some degree of a sympathy vote for her mother, but her surname on the ballot paper will help make the connection in the voters’ minds between the new and previous Labour candidate.
Labour will be hoping that the personal vote that Gwyneth Dunwoody developed may well be in part transferable from mother to daughter. The Conservatives mean while seem to have taken the view that Gwyneth Dunwoody’s personal vote had become quite substantial since 1983. According to The Times:
The Tories are bullish after their landslide victory in the May 1st local elections and a national poll last week that put Labour on a record low of 23% and the Conservatives on 49%. They consider Dunwoody’s 24-year reign in the constituency to be, in large measure, a ‘personal vote’.
However, I would not be so sure about that. Many MPs become arrogant during their time in office and tend to over-estimate their personal vote. Despite having been the MP for Crewe since 1983 I would estimate Gwyneth Dunwoody’s personal following numbered no more than 2,000 votes, if indeed that. Most of the people who liked her would probably have voted Labour regardless of whether she was the candidate.
Yet, in a situation where potentially every vote may count and the result could indeed be quite close, any personal following that Tamsin Dunwoody may leech from her mother would not be unwelcomed by a rather desperate and increasingly lacklustre Labour party.
Speaking of Labour’s desperation; campaigning by any political party in trouble always gets nasty and personal when that side believes that the seat they hold could be lost. Someone called Andrew Stone (not his/her real name no doubt) claimed that I was being negative in my last posting on opinion polling – I thought I was just being realist, but there we go. However, if ‘Andrew’ really wants to take a look at something negative then I suggest ‘he’ heads on over to Tamsin Dunwoody’s by-election website and reads articles such as ‘Don’t be conned by Tory Boy’. The entirely negative nature of Labour’s ‘don’t let those nasty old Tories back in’ campaign shows quite clearly that they believe that they may lose Crewe.
While Labour may appear to be falling apart at the moment, the Conservatives cannot hope that is all it will take to actually win this by-election or indeed the next general election. To the Conservative’s advantage are the recent council election results in parts of Crewe where the party won a number of seats of Labour. However, the party needs to be careful of thinking that because some Labour voters did not turn out in the locals they will not turn out for the by-election either.
Furthermore, if you take a look at the results of every single parliamentary by-election held since the General Election in 2005, the Conservatives have been exceedingly poor at maintaining their General Election vote. In fact, every single time their vote has fallen below the General Election mark. Despite changes in national circumstances and mood towards the Conservatives, I cannot see this trend changing and I therefore predict that the Conservative vote in Crewe and Nantwich will fall below the 14,000 mark established at the last election.
If that trend continues then for Edward Timpson to win Crewe and Nantwich he would need Labour’s vote to drop by in excess of eight thousand votes, which, while possible seems to me to be unlikely. With that said, although I have not been on the ground canvassing in Crewe and Nantwich and therefore have not picked up the mood in the constituency, based upon all of the above I tentatively predict that Labour will hold Crewe and Nantwich. Here are a few guesstimates:
If the vote is above a thousand I have rounded to the nearest five hundred while if it was below a thousand then it has been rounded to the nearest fifty. Also, if you happen to be a very tribal Tory (which most activists are) then you may not like this conclusion because it does not fit with what you wish to hear, so you better just keep on hoping that I am wrong.
Realistically speaking, I would be more hopeful of a by-election victory in Crewe and Nantwich this month if I believed the Conservative party was getting its policies and strategy correct. When the electorate go to the polls they need to be offered an alternative vision, not just pledges to do the same thing but slightly more competently or efficiently. Why vote for a New Labour imitation when you could have the real thing?
David Cameron says that he wants to make this a referendum on the 10p tax band reform by Gordon Brown. All well and good, but if for example people who have voted Labour in the past are saying that they are tired of high taxes and high fuel and food prices, then it is almost entirely pointless for the Conservatives to continue promising to ‘share the proceeds of growth’ (whatever that may really mean) and pretty much keep most taxes at the same level.
