Eastleigh

Talk of a by-election in Portsmouth South has been growing, fuelled by allegations against MP Mike Hancock. And, in a speech to the parliamentary press gallery lunch yesterday, Nigel Farage claimed Ukip could win it. The reasoning is simple: Ukip are on the up, and they came within 2,000 votes and 5 percentage points of a win in Eastleigh, so surely they can go over the top in another Hampshire by-election where the Lib Dem incumbent has had to step down amidst a scandal. Of course Ukip could win — but its chances may not be as high as that reasoning suggests. Indeed, Farage himself seems to think his party would be more likely than not to lose. He said 'I would think that the odds on Ukip winning it would be 2/1, 3/1 at Ladbrokes and elsewhere.

Nick Boles is getting a roasting in Number 10 tonight for his comments in The Times about the Eastleigh by-election, I understand. There was considerable disquiet about the interview, in which the Planning Minister said his party had run a 'truly rotten campaign' and failed to convey the modernisation message. "Where was the hope? It was as if modernisation had never happened. We screwed it up. We didn't even screw up in a new way. We screwed it up in an old way that we have been doing for a decade. It's so frustrating." This was apparently Boles doing his own thing rather than a decision from the top that someone needed to go out to the media and be clear that no-one blamed Maria Hutchings for the Conservatives coming third in the by-election.

A couple of reflections upon Eastleigh. Firstly it was indeed an appalling night for Labour; midterm the party came second in this constituency in the early 90s. It received the votes a joke candidate might expect this time around. Maybe that’s because they put a comedian in the seat. I have no objection to John O’Farrell’s writing at all; but maybe one reason for Labour’s failure – and probably not the most important – was his candidature. He is the sort of thing London Labour loves; metropolitan, cool, ever so witty. Ever so PC. Does any of that play outside the M25? I don’t think so. And the result would suggest I’m right. Ed needs to grasp the hand of Maurice Glasman a little more tightly.

The result might be in, but that doesn't mean there's nothing useful polls can tell us about the Eastleigh by-election. What swayed the voters? Why did they vote as they did? And — perhaps of most interest — how might they vote next time? Yesterday, Lord Ashcroft's polling operation phoned 760 Eastleigh residents, 654 of whom had voted in the by-election. All sorts of warning labels need slapping across the figures: they aren't weighted, so are subject to a much higher risk of selection bias than other polls, and even if the sample were representative and random, the margin of error would be 3.5 points (and higher for subsets of those 760 respondents). But here are a few interesting nuggets from the data: 1. The Lib Dems won the ground game.

So now that the polls have closed in Eastleigh, here are the likely scenarios for tonight's Eastleigh by-election result, and what each combination will mean: A) 1. Tories 2. Liberal Democrats 3. UKIP It's stating the obvious that this is the best outcome for David Cameron, showing that the Tories can win in those target Lib Dem seats, and that they can beat a confident UKIP, no matter what grumpy backbenchers say. But it's a disaster for Nick Clegg: in fact, any scenario other than victory is a disaster for Nick Clegg. For Nigel Farage, coming third when his party has been so confident, particularly in the last 24 hours, about a surge in support, will be a dampener, but it will also confirm that he was right to not have stood himself and face a second defeat in the same constituency.

What a strange PMQs. The house seemed half empty. The tug of elsewhere dominated proceedings. Richard Drax asked the prime minister if ‘prospective members of parliament’ should ever speak in support of terrorism.  David Cameron took this cue to rebuke John O’Farrell. Labour’s candidate at Eastleigh has admitted to feeling ‘a surge of excitement’ when he learned that the IRA had nearly assassinated Mrs Thatcher in the Brighton bomb. Cameron asked Ed Miliband to condemn his candidate. Miliband refused. ‘If he wants me to answer questions I’ll swap places any time.’ Miliband’s aim today was to turn the triple-A downgrade into a government-breaking issue. It didn’t work.

The Lib Dems are still on course to hold Eastleigh. Despite the loss of Britain’s AAA credit rating and the unfurling Rennard scandal, Lord Ashcroft’s latest poll today puts their candidate Mike Thornton on 33 per cent. Tory candidate Maria Hutchings is lagging five points behind on 28 per cent while Ukip are a little further behind with 21 per cent. Disappointingly for Ed Miliband, the Labour party's celebrity candidate John O’Farrell is coming in with just 12 per cent. This confirms two things. Firstly, the by-election is only about local politics. As we discussed on last week’s View from 22 podcast, Chris Huhne has barely been mentioned on the doorstep.

What effect will the Rennard allegations have on the Eastleigh by-election? Channel 4 has been working on the story for months, but it is obviously taking off at an inconvenient time for the Liberal Democrats. There is also - for both Coalition parties, although particularly for the Tories because this was a key pledge for George Osborne - the problem of the AAA credit rating loss. But don't forget that the by-election was triggered by Chris Huhne's 'guilty' plea for perverting the course of justice, and in spite of repeated references in Conservative campaign material to 'trust', Huhne appears to have had little effect on the by-election. One Conservative MP I spoke to about the Rennard scandal over the weekend suspects it may have similar limited impact on the Lib Dems.