Five things we learned in Eastleigh

Last night, the voters of Eastleigh elected a new MP.  The result came in around 02:20 GMT this morning, and looked like this:

Of course, as is the law of politics, every party will try to put some spin on it.  But what can we take from yesterday's by-election result?

1. LibDems actually can hold seats

I had predicted on Wednesday that the LibDems would win the seat with around 32% of the vote, and that came out about right.  LibDem support in Eastleigh went down around the same amount as it has up and down the UK, and in seats like this where the main opponent is (or at least was) the Conservative party, they still have a chance to hold on.  The swing between the Tories and the LibDems was practically zero in this by-election, and considering that there are more LD-Con marginals than LD-Lab marginals, it's a sign that their seat count in 2015 may not quite be as bad as we currently think (though, to be clear, it will still be nowhere near the 57 they won in 2010).

2. UKIP is now the party of protest

This is a title that the Liberal Democrats held since the 1980s, as people who didn't like the two main parties saw the LibDems as a place to register a protest vote against the two parties of government.  It even won them seats in by-elections right up to the 2005-2010 parliament.  However, now that they're in government and generally hated (how's that tuition fee thing going?), people need a new avenue through which to express their dissatisfaction with what are now the three parties of government.  Though UKIP is a single issue party, they (partially along with the Conservatives) have been able to convince the public that the issue of Europe is more important than, say, environmental policy, and therefore capitalised on the high availability of protest vote.

3. The Conservatives have zero chance of a majority government

Generally in the South East of England, the polls show a swing from the LibDems to the Tories of 2.8%.  This kind of swing, even if Labour doesn't manage to take any of their seats in 2015 (yes, I know I'm being more than generous), won't be enough to give the Conservatives a majority government.  In this by-election, the swing from the LibDems to the Tories is only 0.2%, which would only give them one seat more than present, far short of an overall majority.  This will certainly lead to questions about Cameron's leadership, but I'll come back to that later.

4. Labour cannot capitalise on anti-austerity vote

This is not a seat that Labour had any chance of winning; in 2010, they only received 10% of the vote.  Last night, that's exactly where they finished, only 0.2% ahead of where they were nearly three years ago.  If the national polls were to be believed, I would have expected Labour's vote to roughly double, not stay stagnant.  After Bradford West, where Labour lost their seat to Respect's George Galloway, this is the second exceptionally poor result for Labour since the general election, and Labour will have to figure out how to take the anti-austerity sentiment and turn it into votes.

5. The right is more divided than ever

Though the party itself has always been divided on many issues, the Conservatives have always been the only major party representing the right of British politics.  As the left has been divided for the last couple of decades between Labour and the LibDems, the right is now starting to be divided between the Tories and UKIP.  UKIP was able to pull off a 19% swing against the Conservatives, and they have lost over a third of their 2010 vote.  Backbench Tories are starting to become nervous about UKIP taking away votes, and therefore seats, and I would not be surprised to see someone from the more Eurosceptic side of the party challenge David Cameron for the leadership.

Normally, a by-election doesn't really say much about the state of the country.  This by-election, however, was unique, and could become a sign of what's to come between now and 2015.