Conservative Thames Victory
The Conservative candidate, John Howell has comfortably won the by-election in Henley as originally predicted with a small swing to the Conservatives while the Labour vote collapsed.
However, the Liberal Democrats share of the vote did also increase slightly despite the fact that they spent more time playing the man rather than the ball in what was for them a typically ‘negative’ by-election campaign.
While overall turnout fell it would appear that the Conservative vote held up reasonably well especially when considering that this was not a high profile by-election in the eyes of the national media in the same way as Crewe and Nantwich.
Much hard work and effort was put into this campaign by MPs and party activists who, much like David Cameron this morning, will no doubt be very pleased by this result as it vindicated their ‘positive’ campaigning approach without revealing actual policies.
This may hint that the Conservative voting electorate are in some respects optimistic that David Cameron will be more conservative in Government than he is saying he will be in opposition.
