Chris Heaton-Harris
@chhcalling
Chair of Private, Public and Charitable Boards. Former Member of Parliament for Daventry and former Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. Now enjoying life!
34 194Followers
182Following
12 947Posts total
319.5KViews on collected posts
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@chhcalling Brilliant analysis, Chris.
Especially "No party owns the votes of the electors"
and
"By-Elections are rarely good news for the governing party".
Labour are in for a rude awakening on June 19th.
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@chhcalling Last point is spot on: I reported from the controversial Batley & Spen by-election in 2021. At 5pm on polling day, .@georgegalloway was still 1/4 favourite to top the poll. But @UKLabour mobilised every available activist, got their vote out, and, dramatically, swung
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7) And controversially, hustings count for way less than they ever use to. Individual conversations on doorsteps/outside shops etc matter much much more. Getting the data to get your vote out on the day is where the time should be spent.
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6) Whilst commentators will be concentrating rightly on the macro-politics of the campaign, at least one big local issue will come to the fore and that does have the potential to swing voters away from Parties not in the race to a Party they wouldn’t normally vote for.
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4) It doesn’t matter how many Parties stand in a by-election. No Party owns the votes of the electors & people want a choice. But, within a few days (& before postal votes drop) local people will have decided which Party (rarely Parties) is the main challenger to the incumbent.
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5) By-elections are rarely good news for the governing Party.
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2) Unless the by-election was caused by illness/death, voters will be peeved of being asked to vote again for their MP. They did that 2yrs ago & genuinely thought they’d done their bit. Having schools closed & another day interrupted bodes badly for the Party causing the election
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3) Treating a constituency like a fiefdom - something you can bequest to a mate or fellow Party member because you’ve had enough/got other plans etc doesn’t go down well. Look at Mid-Beds in the last Parliament, for example.
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I’ve been bemused by some of the commentary about the upcoming Makerfield by-election.
I’ve campaigned in many and stood in one (back in 2004!) and whilst every campaign is different some truths hold in every one I’ve seen.
1)…
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1) Underestimate the electorate at your peril.
Those that are disinterested will continue to be that. But those going to vote know exactly what they are doing and the importance of their vote.
Electorates use by-elections to send messages to those they don’t think are listening.
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Growth & engagement
How the posts we collected actually performed: views and reaction rate post by post, what the audience did with them, and where the follower count goes.
Views per post
25.9K18 May
169.6K
20.1K
22.2K
17.9K
19.2K
20.5K
22.8K
291
93419 May
Last 10 collected posts, oldest on the left. The scale is logarithmic: one post can outrun the rest a hundred times over.
Engagement rate per post
0.43%18 May
0.15%
0.52%
0.36%
0.27%
0.25%
0.16%
0.34%
0.00%
0.64%19 May
Reactions — likes, reposts, replies and quotes — divided by views.
What the audience does
Likes78.7%641 in total
Reposts8.5%69 in total
Replies4.3%35 in total
Quotes2.3%19 in total
Bookmarks6.3%51 in total
Share of every reaction we collected for this account. Replies mean argument, reposts mean endorsement, bookmarks mean the post was worth keeping.
The follower curve appears once this account has two daily snapshots — we take one a day, and this one is on its first.
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