Oldham East and Saddleworth byelection results - live
Rolling coverage live from the count at the Oldham East and Saddleworth byelection
7.15pm: My colleague Martin Wainwright has been out and about in OES today. He's sent me this.
It's been damp and drizzly in the constituency but the polling stations have kept busy and it looks as though the traditional Teatime Turnout is picking up. Oldham town itself has dry weather now and a cap of really thick fog on the Pennines has only crept down as far as the Ram's Head in Denshaw, where they made Tony Blair a birthday cake when he campaigned for Phil Woolas back in May.
Celebration cakes tomorrow morning look most likely to have red candles, but there's a definite, minority view that it could be closer than pundits suggest. I got chatting with a gaggle of voters on their way through twee Uppermill olde shoppes in ex-weavers' cottages include the Bra Spa and Bags of Choice and they weren't taking anything for granted.
"It's always hard fought here," said Maureen Taylor, while a couple of the others speculated about tactical voting. My colleague Chris Thomond, who's been filming all day in the area, was told by a Lib Dem activist in Shaw that some Tory counterparts were quietly saying "Vote Liberal" if they met anyone while pushing through last-minute leaflets. Mind you, the same guy added that he didn't think that the Lib Dems would to make it; it was more a matter of piling up the best possible, respectable vote.
Some of the loudest noise of the day was made by an English Democrat campaigner who got ticked off in Grotton for loudspeakering close to a polling station, where Lib Dems were giving 79-year-old Marjorie Shepherd a lift to vote. She looked more like 59, says Chris; and you can't always judge someone's vote by the lift they accepted. Many a past Saddleworth socialist has gone to the polls in a Tory car, on the sensible grounds that it would give a plusher ride.
Another outsider, UKIP's Paul Nuttall has done well in the contest over massive posters, draw! ing on h is experience as one of the North West's MEPs to plaster the hillsides around Oldham with pale mauve. One of the biggest peers down the busy shopping street in central Lees, promising the large British Asian locality that UKIP doesn't like uncontrolled immigration.
The BNP's former candidate Alwyn Stott, abstaining because of internal quarrels, was meanwhile out shopping for pants in Shaw market, hovering over an XL pair but eventually agreeing with the stallholder that 3X was required. Only 103 Xs separated Phil Woolas from the Lib Dems in May, and it's getting hard, as the evening goes on, to avoid party workers knocking up late or reluctant voters who promised canvassers that they would turn out, who could still make a difference.
I'm just a Londoner up for the day, but Martin is a real authority on elections here. His father Richard was the Liberal MP for Colne Valley. In a lovely article in the Guardian today, Martin recalls electioneering around Saddleworth in the 1970s.
7.09pm: Smarkets, a betting firm, have sent me this assessment of what the odds are of a Lib Dem win.
All indications are that Labour have held onto the seat. Punters are only giving the Liberal Democrats a 7% chance to win, while Labour is right up at 93%. In the past these markets have been a pretty good indication of the eventual result, though obviously surprises do occasionally happen.
6.57pm: Today Manchester City Council announced that it is cutting 2,000 jobs. The council is Labour-controlled and Michael Fallon, the Conservative deputy chairman, has accused the authority of making the announcement today in the hope of influencing voting in OES. He's put out this statement.
Labour are clearly playing politics with people's livelihoods. The announcement was cynically timed to coincide with today's by-election, in full knowledge that a large number of those impacte! d by the news at Manchester City Council are voting today.
6.47pm: Sky's Jon Craig has good news for byelection fans. We could be getting one in Leicester South, he says in a blog. The Labour MP who represents the seat, Sir Peter Soulsby, is tipped to stand as as a candidate for Leicester Mayor and if he is elected he will leave parliament. Soulsby had a majority of about 9,000 over the Lib Dems at the general election.
6.36pm: There's no solid information about turnout yet. The Saddleworth News says that it has been "steady", despite the wet weather. According to the SN, it has been "damp and drizzly". A Labour source, who told me the weather had been "atrocious", said that voting started off "quite slow" in Oldham (the Labour area) but that it was now picking up. Labour have had 600 activists and 40 MPs in the area today delivering leaflets and getting voters to the polls.
At the general election the turnout was 61.2%, which was about four points below the national average. Byelection turnouts are generally lower (particularly in January). In the last parliament the highest turnout in a byelection was 57.7% in Crewe and Nantwich. The lowest was 33% in Glasgow North East.
6.19pm: John McTernan, the former adviser to Tony Blair, has posted a colourful blog at the Telegraph looking at the various possible outcomes of today's byelection. He says that a handsome Labour victory is "highly likely". More interestingly, he says that Ed Miliband could be in trouble if Labour does not win well.
[Miliband] needs a strong result because Oldham East and Saddleworth is a seat where Labour shouldn't need to break sweat. Phil Woolas held the seat when Labour were a bare six points ahead of the Lib Dems nat! ionally; with the margin now closer to 36 points this should fall into his lap.
6.05pm: The Lib Dems have faced a bit of an embarrassment today. Sir Gus O'Donnell, the cabinet secretary, has written to the Labour MP John Trickett saying that the Lib Dem minister Andrew Stunnell made a mistake when he linked a ministerial announcement with a visit to Oldham East and Saddleworth (OES). O'Donnell explains that Sir Humphrey himself couldn't have bettered.
The Minister recognises with hindsight that his visit could have been associated in the minds of the public with a government announcement of additional funding, and has apologised for this.
Labour Uncut has the full text of the O'Donnell letter.
5.58pm: We've got about four hours to go until the polls close in the Oldham East and Saddleworth byelection. The result is expected about three hours later, at 1am. I'm in Manchester now (I'll head to the count a bit later) and I'll be blogging from now until we get a result.
Oldham East and Saddleworth is a three-way marginal and a byelection here would be interesting in any year. But this is the first byelection since the general election (there was a delayed election in Thirsk a few weeks after the general election, but that doesn't really count because it was technically a "delayed election"), the first since Ed Miliband became Labour leader and the first since the Liberal Democrat 's poll ratings plunged down into single figures.
I came up here last week to write a day-long blog and I went home thinking Labour had it in the bag. Nothing I have heard since then has changed my view, but you never really know, the votes are announced and a Labour victory could mean anything from a majority of 100 Phil Woolas's majority was 103 at the general election to a majority of 10,000 or more. There's plenty to get excited about.
LabourList has been running a byelection blog all day. And there was some byelection news in our own Politics Live blog which was running until about an hour ago.
It will really start to get lively after 10pm. But in the meantime, I will be making a few calls and rounding up the best byelection comment from the web.
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