Local elections
Latest by-election results: a quiet end to a quiet month
This week’s council by-elections saw no changes. The Tories held all three seats that were up for grabs, two of which were in the same ward of St Albans city council:
Note that the Greens did well enough for one of their candidates to leapfrog both the Labour candidates. The Liberal Democrats will be pleased to have come second; the party came third when this ward was contested at the 2014 local elections.
The other by-election was for a seat on West Berkshire council, which the Tories defended easily:
January was rather quiet for council by-elections, and the Press Association has been able to use only four comparable results to calculate a “final score” for the month. It found a 2.6% projected nationwide Conservative lead over Labour. This compares with the more than 10% margin the Tories would need to guarantee an outright majority of MPs in May.
Ukip averaged 20.8% in the five wards it contested in January.
UK elections 2015 
I happen to live in Marshalswick South. The by-elections were caused by two Conservative councillors (one elected just last year) resigning to become parliamentary candidates elsewhere.
I can’t recall receiving quite so many campaigning leaflets in recent years. The Green positioning was interesting – please use one of your two votes for our first candidate! Clearly that worked to attract away a quite few Labour votes.