There was one principal local council by-election held on Thursday 2nd February. The Lib Dems gained one seat from Labour. There was one parish or town council by-election result reported to ALDC, a Lib Dem gain from the Tories.

Madeley is a pretty, vibrant and successful village just inside Staffordshire, between Crewe and Newcastle-under-Lyme, and is on the border between Staffordshire and Cheshire (and close to the Shropshire border too!) . The two member ward is in Newcastle Under Lyme. The Labour vote has historically been based in the old pit village area despite the pit closing in 1957.
Over the years its often been a close three way fight.  In 2006, for instance, there were just 75 votes between the Labour victor and ourselves in third. In 2010 we took the seat off Labour.  Labour's candidate won the second seat off the Tories in 2011 but his death led to the by-election.

So how did we win our first principal council seat from Labour in 2012?
Some key factors:
1.    The strong record of our existing councillor Billy Welsh in the ward.  We then emphasised the team with our newish candidate who had built his personal record since he fought in May and was well-known as the owner of an award-winning guest house.
2.    The record of our group on the council which is in coalition (since 2006) with the Conservatives on issues such as the environment, recycling and carbon reduction improvements, new developments and a brand new leisure centre. We specifically highlighted the contributions of LD cabinet members and how those actions made a difference to Madeley.
3.    Both the Tories and Labour ran lacklustre campaigns – perhaps due to complacency and the inclement weather.
4.    The Tories failed to oppose the Boundary commission’s plans to abolish the Newcastle Under Lyme parliamentary constituency and put Madeley into a Stoke seat. We did not.
5.    We expected and duly got attacked (largely on local issues) by Labour but we anticipated and rebutted their main attacks.
6.    A small but dedicated cohesive Lib Dem team who ran their best campaign for years.

To top off a good day we won a parish seat off the Tories in Amersham, by four votes in the Old Town ward. Vera Head, of conference office fame, was our successful candidate.  The two big issues that dominated the campaign were the HS2 route going through the ward and Buckinghamshire County council wanting to set up Waste Transfer Station in the ward

There was one principal council by-election held on the 21st January. The Conservatives gained a seat from an Independent in the Uppingham ward of Rutland UA.  Last May, the ward elected one Conservative, one Liberal Democrat and one Independent, with the Conservatives topping the poll.  Unfortunately, in this by-election the Lib Dems came third behind Labour who had not stood last year. The Liberal Democrat candidate Peter Golden’s vote share went down by 2.1% polling200 votes, which was 24.0% of the vote share.

There were three Town Council by-elections reported to ALDC, the Lib Dems gained two seats and held one. The seat we held was in the Morpeth TC, Kirkhill ward, "The actual result was a dead heat - we got the extra vote when lots were drawn." The first seat we gained was in the Leighton Linslade TC, Barnabas ward, in the second town council by-election we gained the seat off an Independent in Berwick-upon-Tweed, St Boisil ward.  This by-election in Berwick was the first time the party's new Connect system had been used in an election, and it performed the job incredibly well.

With less than ninety days to polling day, we all need to up our game in our campaigning for the elections on 3rd May.  On ALDC’s website you will find all the templates and artwork examples you will need along with literature from the party's Department of Elections and Skills, which will save you time and effort that you can use knocking on doors and talking to the people who will vote in May.

ALDC has commissioned a series of FOCUS and campaign material templates for use by Liberal Democrat campaigners available exclusively to members of ALDC.

Packs 1,2,3 and 4 for 2011/2012 have been released and packs 5 and 6 will follow over the next two months:

 The templates include: A3, A4 FOCUS, ideas for direct mail - new voter letters and inserts, postal voter recruitment letters and forms, casework cards, back our campaign artwork, squeeze materials, canvassing leaflets, members newsletters, single issue canvass leaflets, national and local surveys, these along with packs 5 and 6 will give you all the artwork you need for your election campaign and your year round campaigning - all of which have been produced in black and white, two colour (for RISOs) and in full colour (Colour RISO or commercial printer). All the FOCUS leaflets have variations to allow for single and for two and three member wards and election campaigns, and different bar charts for fighting the Tories and Labour. 

There were five principal local council by-election held on Thursday 15th December. The Tories held three but lost one to an Independent and there was an Independent hold. There were no parish or town council by-election result reported to ALDC.

Coombe Vale Ward in New Malden is part of the Lib Dem controlled London Borough of Kingston upon Thames. The balance on the council as a whole is LD 27 Con 21. We held three seats in the ward until 2002, when the Tories took one but it’s been solidly Tory since 2006. Despite it being in the Richmond Park parliamentary constituency it did not have a great record after 2006. However in 2010 we came within 89 votes of taking a seat and we had high hopes of two gains in this double by-election. We lost both seats.
So what happened?
As ever with our ruminations on by-elections, it’s early days and there is much analysis to be done. The first thing to say was that it was not due to a lack of work or expertise. We had experienced, reliable canvassers on the doorsteps, good literature and a great team using the latest techniques. Two years ago this campaign would have won.
The Tories should have been on weak ground. One of the their two resignations was for a councillor  who had moved  to the US and continued to claim his allowance for four months. However they sought to insulate themselves from this by running two female candidates out of the well-resourced Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith’s) office.
We thought we were squeezing the Labour vote hard but obviously not effectively enough as their vote went up. They repeated the mantra that “it’s Labour or the Coalition” whereas the reality was that voting Labour let the Tories in. The turnout, 43% was much higher than expected in a by-election a week before Christmas. In the 2006 all-outs it had been 51% and on general election day in 2010 74%. Much higher than in the Feltham and Heston parliamentary by-election down the road.
We had a huge amount of canvass data two thirds of which was current, and our eve of poll and polling day feedback suggested that we were winning. But we lost all the ballot boxes at the count.  This suggests some fundamental problems. As we develop our responses to those problems over the coming months we need, as London have done, to use by-elections to test their impact.
We can, and should use the time over Christmas to reflect on whether the problem is:

1. Voters are being truthful but change their mind (why?) before they get to a ballot box. -  do we need to counter late voting influences, if so how?
2. Voters don’t like to offend the nice local Lib Dems and even good canvassers are failing to pick it up -  do we need better methods of gathering voter ID that avoid this misinformation, if so, what?.
3. Are we mistaken in our previously held beliefs about who votes when they are identified and knocked up?

ALDC would be keen to hear from those who have theories or suggestions to make.

Other elections

Mid Devon DC, Clare and Shuttern
Melton BC, Frisby on the Wreake
Shetland UA, Shetland Central

With the cold winter weather now set in, the result in a by-election in Wells Constituency in Somerset at least gave us some heart-warming news. Although we didn’t managed to win we achieved an impressive 15% swing from Conservative to Liberal Democrat.

The Brent division of Somerset County Council is a collection of small villages in the Somerset Levels sandwiched between the resorts of Weston-super-Mare and Burnham-on-Sea. Until 1988 it had a Liberal councillor, but since then it has become the safest Conservative seat in Somerset with them receiving nearly 70% of the vote in the last county council elections. The death of the previous Conservative councillor gave us a chance to win the seat back, and although we had a very active candidate and ran a strong campaign we couldn’t quite overturn their huge majority.

Our candidate Helen Groves was a town councillor from Burnham-on-Sea who was involved with a number of local community groups. As soon as we knew back in September that there was to be a by-election the campaign started with our candidate and her team knocking on loads of doors over the coming months. We also had lots of help from across the South West. Certainly this face-to-face contact and identifying local issues early made a big difference as it allowed us to run very local leaflets picking up on specific campaigns in each individual village.

Meanwhile, the Conservatives chose a local farmer and district councillor as their candidate. He already represented part of the division and so in that area at least he had good name recognition. However, he did also have a somewhat controversial reputation following an incident in 2007 when he threw a dead sheep at a crowd of school children.    The Conservatives had few people on the ground until right at the end and spent a lot of money on posting out huge volumes of professionally printed direct mail, leaflets and even a tabloid newspaper. Much of the direct mail was targeted at getting their voters out – a potentially good tactic when turnout is likely to be low – but it only had one uniform message across the whole division. We spent far less, however we had far better campaign messages that combined the very local and the countywide. During the campaign the Conservative county council spent £61,000 on losing a judicial review on library closures and had decided to turn off speed cameras – a big issue in a division that includes the M5 and the busy A38.

What this by-election showed though was that even in big very rural county divisions, it’s still possible to run very intensive election campaigns that make an impact. We didn’t win, (although we think it was the biggest swing from the Conservatives to us in the constituency in 30 years), but if we can get a 15% swing against the Conservatives in other places in the next county council elections we will do very well indeed.

The other by-election on the day was:
Rochford DC, Rayleigh Central