George Galloway after winning Rochdale — the third time he unseated a Labor incumbent
George Galloway overturned a large Labor majority for for the third time in his parliamentary career in the Rochdale by-election, winning by a majority of 5,697 votes.
Given previous election victories in Bethnal Green and Bow in 2005 and Bradford West in 2012, this means that no challenger has won as many seats from England's main parties in a by-election since the Second World War.
Ukip may well have enjoyed some success in the middle of the last decade — with Tory defectors Douglas Carswell and Mark Reckless carrying Tory voters with them in the 2014 by-election — but no rebel has come close to repeat Mr. Galloway's hat-trick. /p>
In fact, apart from these Ukip Party candidates, the only other Ukip candidate was the canceled Labor MP Dick Tavern, who won the Lincoln by-election prompted by his own defection from the breakaway party. The Democratic Labor Party managed to do this at least once. This was in 1973.
Turnout in Rochdale for the 2019 general election was 60.1 per cent. While the drop in participation this time around is steep, it does not go beyond the figure of 37.1 per cent in Kingswood or 38 per cent in Wellingborough in early February.
In the end, despite Mr Galloway's fury, the rhetoric succeeded cause a storm, Rochdale voters know the polls will open once again, for the general election, before the end of the year.
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