A Hold on a Low Turnout

Labour held Holborn and St Pancras on Thursday 8 October. Sagal Abdi-Wali, the leader of Camden council, won 12,292 votes, 45 per cent of the total, and the Green Party leader, Zack Polanski, won 8,928, or 33 per cent, The Guardian reported. Her majority was 3,364. The by-election was called after the former prime minister Keir Starmer resigned the seat in September, and it was the first since Andy Burnham became Labour leader and prime minister, according to LabourList.

The figure underneath all of those numbers is turnout. It was 38.76 per cent, with 27,309 people casting votes, RTÉ reported. The Guardian reported that this was the lowest turnout for any by-election held in England during this parliament, and 15.4 percentage points down on the 2024 general election. LabourList set it beside two other recent contests: 58.7 per cent in Makerfield and 47.5 per cent in Gorton and Denton.

What a majority measures

A by-election majority is counted among the people who voted. On RTÉ’s figures, a turnout of 38.76 per cent from 27,309 votes implies an electorate of roughly 70,000. Abdi-Wali’s 12,292 votes are therefore about one in six of the registered voters in the constituency, and Polanski’s 8,928 about one in eight. Those are this publication’s calculations from the published turnout and vote totals, not figures given by the returning officer or either campaign.

None of that changes who won. The constituency has been Labour since it was created in 1983, held by Frank Dobson for 32 years and by Starmer for 11, RTÉ reported. In 2024 Starmer won it with 49 per cent, and Andrew Feinstein, a pro-Palestine independent, came second with 19 per cent, Al Jazeera reported.

Two readings of one count

Labour read the result as a sign of progress. Bridget Phillipson, the party chair, told Times Radio: “It demonstrates that Labour’s message of hope is really cutting through, that people don’t just want parties like Labour to talk about the progressive change this country needs, but they want to see it delivered in action.”

The Greens read it as a floor. Polanski, who is not an MP, congratulated Abdi-Wali but said, “One in three voters backed us here, and we know that many more considered it,” according to Al Jazeera. In a later interview with Sky News, the Guardian reported, he said it had been the party’s second best by-election performance.

The Guardian’s analysis, by its senior political correspondent Peter Walker, weighed the turnout both ways. He wrote that the low turnout and Abdi-Wali’s numerically modest majority might not look like the greatest endorsement of the government, but that they were also likely to reflect, in part, a widespread assumption that Labour would win.

The paper’s news report made a similar point about the Greens. Polanski’s 8,928 votes compared with the nearly 11,350 that his party and Feinstein received combined in 2024, which it said suggests the Greens have not significantly expanded their base in the constituency. Luke Tryl of the polling firm More in Common was more direct about Labour’s side, according to the Daily Mail. “This is not a result that is indicative of Labour being able to do well enough to be able to win a general election with an overall majority,” he said.

The rest of the field

The Conservatives came third with 7.1 per cent, Reform UK fourth with 5.9 per cent and the Liberal Democrats fifth with 3.4 per cent, failing to hold their deposit, LabourList reported. The Daily Mail reported that Restore took 2.5 per cent, and that its 692 votes were more than the gap between the Conservatives and Reform. The Conservatives’ share was almost exactly what the party took in 2024, the Guardian’s analysis noted.

The week behind the vote

The by-election came days after the Green Party’s conference voted for a motion declaring Zionism a form of racism and calling for Israel to be replaced by a single Palestinian state, the Guardian reported. It passed despite opposition from four of the party’s five MPs. Polanski was absent from the debate and vote so that he could campaign in the constituency. Asked on Sky News whether he backed the motion as passed, he said: “I would have supported the motion as amended. It wasn’t amended, so no.”

Abdi-Wali came to Britain from Somalia as a child refugee in the 1990s. She told the Guardian after her win that people at the school gates had found the Greens’ motion divisive. In her victory speech she said: “I hope this moment says something about who gets to belong. For people who look like me. I hope they see themselves reflected in this place and know that their path too belongs here. This is Camden and this is Britain.”

Polanski said he would stay on. “Of course I can carry on as leader of the Green party,” he told the BBC, as the Guardian reported. “We’re a party of 220,000 members. I’ve taken a loss tonight but our movement is so much bigger than one election or one motion and we’re going to grow.” RTÉ reported that he said his future would be up to members at a leadership election due next summer.

The seat is settled until the next general election. It was settled by fewer than four in ten of the people entitled to vote in it, a figure that appears in none of the party statements quoted here.

Sources

The vote totals, percentages, the 15.4-point fall in turnout, its ranking among by-elections in England, the timing of Starmer’s resignation, the 2024 comparison with Feinstein’s vote, and the remarks of Phillipson, Abdi-Wali and Polanski to the BBC and Sky News are from the Guardian’s news report. Peter Walker’s assessment and the Conservative comparison with 2024 are from the Guardian’s analysis. The 38.76 per cent turnout, the 27,309 votes cast, the seat’s history and the leadership election timing are from RTÉ. Polanski’s “one in three” remark and the 2024 result are from Al Jazeera. The shares for the Conservatives, Reform and the Liberal Democrats, the lost deposit, the comparison turnouts and the by-election’s place as Burnham’s first are from LabourList. Restore’s vote and Luke Tryl’s remark are from the Daily Mail. The implied electorate and the shares of registered voters are this publication’s calculations.