Somerton and Frome quick view: got to be a ripe target for the Lib Dems, they held it from 1997 to 2015 where it went conservative. Lib Dems have been second there ever since. By contrast Labour have never held much sway there, peaking at 17.3% of the vote in 2017.
Yep, clearly a massive Lib Dem target. In general there are a number of Tory seats across the South where the Lib Dems finished 3rd but are the stronger challenger due to the ceiling on the Labour vote - places where Labour might be 2nd with 20%, but where the number of people willing to vote Labour will never go above 25-30%. That’s what we’ve seen in a number of by-elections over the last 18 months where the Lib Dems jumped from 3rd to 1st.
This is not one of these places though. As you say, the Lib Dems held the seat for 18 years and are the current 2nd placed party. They also have a majority on Somerset council. But they (or the Liberals/SDP before them) have been 1st or 2nd in this seat going back even further, in fact in every single election since the seat was formed in 1983 - and have been either 1st or 2nd in the two neighbouring seats it was created out of going back to the mid-1970s.
The Lib Dems in the South West will be able to flood this seat with activists, whilst there is nothing about the area or its electoral history or profile to suggest Labour should waste any resources here when there are concurrent better by-elections for them to target.
One more byelection, that’s very interesting. Will be fun to see which way those seats go now.
Several times. The record is 15 in 1986, when all the Unionist MPs resigned to fight by-elections in protest at the Anglo-Irish Agreement. Outside of Northern Ireland, there have been instances of 5 at once and one instance of 6.
Rip well this is embarrassing
