Chesham And Amersham: Stop Me If You Think You've Heard This One Before

Lib Dems Win A Shock Byelection

A right wing political party is defending a seat they won by a sizable majority at the last election, in an area with a lot of well-off white social liberals, and the expectation is they will hold the seat at the replacement election, caused by a midterm vacancy. Where am I talking about?

I could be talking about the Georgia 6th, where Tom Price won by 20% in 2016 before taking a cabinet job from Donald Trump. I could be talking about the Calgary Centre byelection of 2012, caused by Lee Richardson resigning his seat. Or, it could be Thursday's byelection in the UK constituency of Chesham and Amersham, where the Tories won 55% of the vote before the incumbent member passed away. In Georgia, Jon Ossoff gave it a run and didn't win, before the GOP lost the seat in November 2018 anyways, on route to losing the state two years after that. In Calgary, the Tory margin fell from about 40% to 4%, before (on slightly but not substantially enough to matter different boundaries) losing the seat in 2015, and ushering in competitiveness for the seat. And in Chesham tonight, the Lib Dems have run the Tories down, and won by over 20%.

Now, I didn't preview the race, because I thought it would be boring. Lib Dems close the margin, lose by 10 and not 30, and we all move on. Genuinely, that's what I expected, not this. Even had they barely lost, it would be a shock that it's this close - both because of raw margin, and also the fact that this is a pretty damn representative election. Turnout in the seat hit 55.2% of all registered voters, which is just under 70% of 2019 votes cast in the byelection, which means it means something, if not everything. This isn't some extremely low turnout race where volatility was cranked up because so few people voted. And the Tories just got smacked in the exact same way in the exact same place every right wing party is getting smacked, except they got smacked much worse than usual.

Like, do I need to say the line at this point, or do you all know where I'm going with this? Oh, no, you need the chorus line? There's a *all together now* Global Fucking Realignment on social attitudes and social liberalism, and big shock, the Tories are bleeding with social liberals in a 55% Remain seat. Like, you want to be shocked by this? This is the exact same trend that led to Labour winning the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Mayoralty in May, and it is the other side of the coin of the reason that the Tories gained Hartlepool by whatever ungodly margin they won by. The Tories are doing much better with cultural conservatives in places where I would feel a bit uncomfortable being with my partner in public, and are doing much worse in places where I would have absolutely no reticence.

Does that sound familiar? Because that's why the GOP are tanking in rich, wealthy, socially liberal Southlake, Texas and surging in culturally conservative Youngstown, Ohio. None of this is hard to understand. When you go for Youngstown - or, the Red Wall, as it may be - you cannot hold your strength in Southlake or Chesham. This has been shown across the globe, and yet, here some people are, continuing to pretend the right can hold their gains amongst cultural conservatives while avoiding losses - if not making some gains back - with social liberals. If that seems ludicrous to you, well, you'd be correct.

What does tonight's election result mean? It means a lot, both for the Tories and for what it means about the US. What it means for the Tories is fairly simple - they're going to bleed some number of seats in the South and London next time they go to the polls in Remain supporting areas, and they're going to need to augment their majority for those losses with gains in the Red Wall. Fortunately for them, there are plenty left to go get, even after the boundary review. The other lesson is they'll win Batley and Spen in a few weeks, because if they're bleeding more than the polls suggest in the south, either the polls are wrong (highly unlikely) or they're doing worse with social liberals and better with cultural conservatives, which means that whatever your prior before tonight was should probably skew a few points more Tory. (Also, congrats on the Lib Dems for actually winning this - I know I'm going to get yelled at for framing this all about the Tory failure, but let's be honest, this is a Tory failure.)

Now, here's where I'm going to turn to the US implications of this. Anyone who says there is no evidence of whether the suburbs will revert to the GOP after Trump needs to be put in pundit jail forever. We have all the evidence you could ever want that they will not revert - we have the Canadian data, and the Australian data, the 2019 UK Election, and now we have this. We have the UK Locals too, but that wasn't enough for those who seek to ignore what the rest of the world says. Plainly? If you're not looking at what comparable democracies are showing you, you're just making an ass out of yourself for no good reason.

If the increase in Democratic support in suburban areas and amongst well-off white social liberals was about the former President, why did Chesham and Amersham just swing this much? Why did the posh Melbourne suburb of Kooyong swing so much against Josh Frydenberg in 2019? Why did the UK Tories lose Putney on a night they gained nearly 50 seats in 2019? Why did Milton toss the incumbent Deputy Leader of the Conservative Party of Canada with a 20% swing against her in four years in 2019? If it's all about Trump, explain this. Oh, wait, it's not. The UK Tories just lost a seat they had no business losing solely because of a Global Fucking Realignment, and anybody, in any country, who refuses to look at what the global data says is just sticking their head in the sand and trying to pray the data away. The problem is, it's here, it's clear, and getting even more clear every time there's an election. At this point, just stop me if you think you've heard this one before.