The Eastleigh by-election machine is well and truly up and running this weekend, with ministers starting to make their way down to the Hampshire constituency to start campaigning.
The focus is on the two coalition parties who have now both chosen their candidates, but it’s also interesting to see what Labour’s up to in the constituency. Labour came second in the 1994 by-election, but as the graph below shows, the party then embarked on a slide which saw it poll third in the four subsequent elections.
What’s interesting, though, is that though the party hasn’t yet announced its candidate, it’s had a stall down in the town for two weeks already, when there wasn’t even a by-election on the cards until last Monday.
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