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Originally Posted by harryaldridge
AT conference Jon Arnott gave a very interesting presentation. It showed the reults of recent by-elections and UKIPs best performing seats are generally rock solid Labour.
His conclusion - dont just think we attract Tories, we actually appeal to labour voters as well.
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UKIP probably got more votes from Labour than from the Conservatives in the London constituency in the 2004 EU Election - certainly the swings away from Labour (huge in some outer parts of the capital like the Bexley-Bromley seat in the London Assembly elections held the same day) almost matched the size of the increase in the vote for UKIP. That doesn't necessarily mean that the Labour voters switched directly to UKIP, but it is a very strong indication that that is, in fact, what happened. Labour lost the most and UKIP appeared to be the main beneficiary in the London Assembly elections as well as UKIP winning a London seat in the EU 'Parliament'.
Labour also did badly in 2004 in the south-east 'regional' (England) onstituency in the EU Elections and Labour just scraped in with a single representative in the 'east' Midlands (of England) 'region'.
In London and the 'east' Midlands I would suggest that UKIP got more votes from Labour than from the Conservatives. In the south-east UKIP may have taken votes roughly equally from the two 'main' parties.