Normally in British elections there is a binary attitude to challenger prospects based on whether or not they are in second place, but it is not unknown for third-place parties to leap-frog to victory rather than being squeezed. So the question is simple: Where could Reforn UK do this?

Reform have 34 third-places where they are above 20% and less than 10% behind second-place and in the vast majority of these the winning party is in the mid-30s in percentage share of the vote. These represent odds-off seats where with work a third-party squeeze can be avoided which may result in a future election gain. However interest here is leap-frogs and not longer-term marathons so will use the subjective thresholds of Reform UK being under 6% behind second place and needing under 12% for the gain. This gives 12 seats:

In swing terms these are better than most of Reform’s second places and if the party is going to do well then it should be taking at least half of these seats. In fact they would be crazy not to make most if not all of these targets. The important bit is not being too far behind third place because then all the old arguments about wasted votes get deployed.

Other parties?

The LibDems don’t have any good third-places. Only 4 of their third-places are above 20% and of those the closest they are to winning is Exmouth and Exeter East where they are 6.5% behind in a Conservative seat with a majority of 122 votes. The last general election was good for them overall so they don’t have many good second places either. The Greens have a surprising number of second and third places but the only two where they are anywhere remotely close is Huddersfield and Bristol South where Labour have majorities of 11% and 17% respectively.

That time of year for various local and regions elections and first up: Runcorn by-election. This was something I called as a stretch for Reform to win but they managed it. By six votes. So no effort wasted. It was towards the bottom of my list of potential Reform targets and was Labour’s 16 safest seat.

There is usually a backlash against incumbents when an MP leaves their seat alive but in this case it is a reflection of how much Labour have gone against what they claim to stand for, and without the legacy of Thatcher the Labour vote is a turkey shoot for Reform. Labour have blow it and this by-election is just the first of many consequences.

I suspect the Conservatives did not have the local resources to be heard above the Reform bandwagon but for them it is the local elections that are of more concern, as they had by far the most to lost and did. Greens did well to hold onto all their voters.

Labour got lucky in not also losing three mayoral posts to Reform but those were on a pitiful 30% of the vote and had the elections still had the second preferance they would probably have been lost. They are basically relying on distortions of FPTP as it won’t be popularity that saves them.