The Lib Dems. are not retaining Tory voters. Both parties lost a third of their percentage and half of their absolute vote in Eastleigh. They clung onto this seat by the skin of their teeth only because the opposition did as badly as they did, and not quite enough of them defected to UKIP.

I agree the rise in UKIP at the cost of the Tories and fall in Lib Dem support at the benefit of Labour poses double trouble for the Tories. This is simply because of the political mathematics of a first past the post system when an ideology is split into two warring parties.

The third point is the crucial one.
The Tory fantasy has been that by focussing on Europe they could neutralise UKIP. The opposite is true. As anyone with a decent understanding of framing knows, by stoking interest in the opposition’s issues, one stokes support for them too. Every time the Tories talk about Europe, NO MATTER WHAT THEY SAY, they increase likely UKIP support.
Furthermore, in Eastleigh, the Tories had about the most UKIP-ish candidate imaginable, in Maria Hutchings: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/maria-hutchings-tories-sarah-palin-1729143. This too didn’t help them. For, in the choice between UKIP and UKIP-lite, which do you think voters are likely to go for? So Hutchings probably gained the Tories approximately zero votes, while losing them a bunch of votes to the LibDems.
Those from parties that are not the big three, such as the Green Party, can take some heart from the result – the number of voters prepared to vote outside the big three goes ever up. Confirming the analysis I undertook here, some months ago: http://www.greenhousethinktank.org/files/greenhouse/home/Strangled_by_the_Duoploy_-_inside.pdf
But the result also suggests that it is high time that the media turned their spotlight onto UKIP’s seamier side. The electorate needs to know that UKIP are climate-denying loons; that a not-insignificant number of their MEPs (especially those that haven’t already left UKIP, at least voluntarily!) past and present have confessed to or been found guilty of criminal acts; that they favour untrammelled free trade and new free trade agreements especially across the Atlantic, making us essentially the 51st state (the UK DependentonAmericaParty?); and that their policy platforms are out of sync with mainstream thinking in this country (especially perhaps in their reactionary social conservatism). Here are some of the ways one might seek to show this:

Health: UKIP like private models – and say they’re looking to places like the Netherlands – (mandatory health insurance so less well off get hit hardest for extra payments) or Australia (part privatised financed by extra 1.5% on income tax). So UKIP want to make you pay more and rely on private healthcare. Vote UKIP, and say goodbye to the NHS.

Education: UKIP want to give parents education vouchers. The wealthy get subsidised to send their children to private schools, (with a £3000 voucher you’ll still need an extra £7000 per year per child for a private school) so anyone who can’t fund the difference will be stuck with schools UKIP claims are no good. UKIP: Privatising education, for the benefit of at most the better-off. Vote UKIP if you want to end public education in this country.

Welfare: Anyone on any benefit – even vis a vis housing or council tax – faces compulsory welfare work schemes. UKIP: Welcoming millions to the chain gang.

UKIP’s 28% vote means that they aren’t entitled to be treated as a fun sideshow any more.

The Tories have been busy spreading a toxic message about immigrants and immigration; those that bought into this rewarded Cameron by voting UKIP. He got his come uppance but disappointment for me is lack of Labour discourse on immigration. Where are the voices pointing out the value of immigration? You get the occasional article in the broadsheet press reminding us of the values and added value of immigrants coming to this country, but the message peddled by the politicians of all parties seems to be that immigration is at best a necessary evil that has to be controlled. Why is anyone surprised then at the rise of UKIP?

It would be interesting to know which parties (if any) UKIP voters in Eastleigh supported previously. I have read (and it could just be anecdotal) that they took of a lot of the “anti-politics” vote that used to go to the Lib Dems.

I think that the Tories ‘re-toxification’ is already well underway. Was it a coincidence that reduced immigration figures were announced yesterday?

What’s most worrying is that Cameron has found himself in this position so quickly. This feels like Major all over again, but that was after more than a decade in power.

I just don’t think that most of our politicians, especially the Tory ones, can adapt to the new way of working required to co-habit successfully. They’ve risen up through the yah-boo adversarial system and think that the coalition is just a temporary aberration — which as you show above is likely pretty unlikely.

It’s fun to watch, but in the meantime people and the economy are suffering.

I think the significance of the UKIP vote in Eastleigh might be being overstated. As Richard questioned it would be interesting to see where it came from, but the ex-Tory UKIP voter on past form seems to be willing to vote UKIP in elections that do not matter in their eyes (e.g. EU, bye-elections) but returns home in national elections.

Don’t underestimate the effect Maria Hutchins had on the vote. She was plainly dishonest and unpleasant and avoided uncontrolled situations such as hustings.

How on earth do you get the idea that “the Libdem vote has collapsed from their left flank”? Labour came nowhere. If you take Eastleigh as representing the future then the Libdems are the left in UK politics. Labour will probably do better elsewhere, but at the moment the party looks like a corpse.

The other lesson is that despite the aggressive support of a large part of the press, which also screamed abuse at the Libdems and despite an utterly dire tory candidate, UKIP can’t win.

I find it incredible that Labour are trying to spin their thorough reaming by UKIP into some sort of victory.

This is a massive shift to the right that even the increasingly rightwing Labour can’t keep up with. Maybe they ought to think about reconnecting with the left.

OK. This is not a Labour victory, nor is it a Labour reaming. Anyone trying to play this either way is so partisan that they can legitimately be classed as mentally ill.

This is an occasion where, in a constituency where FPTP and tactical voting has meant that Labour have been dead for 20 years, the superstar LD MP who previously guaranteed an outlyingly high LD vote suddenly became a disgraced jailbird who’d presumably (though, as Italy shows, not a 100% guarantee) bring the vote share down.

Not many left-leaning people in Eastleigh voted Labour in 2010 (5000 did, same people as this time round; they all have posters in their front rooms). Same this time round.

The party of “even though we’re actually far more corrupt in office than any of the others, see our MEP records, LOL” won, because people are stupid and thought they were a less corrupt alternative to the current set of bastards.

Portraying it as a shift to the right is also gibberingly shitbag mental, apart from the extent to which “if you’re a populist lunatic and you promise the impossible when everyone hates everyone else, you might win despite being even worse than all of them”.

(well, unless you accept that the Nazis were a party of the right, of course; I don’t think that’s a reasonable take)

“it confirms the view that the Lib Dem vote has collapsed from their left flank not the right.”

I don’t see this at all. Lib Dem voters appear to have defected to UKIP, not to Labour. In other words, the right-wingers have defected and the left-wingers have stayed put. It’s hard to square that with the national perception that Labour is picking up former Lib Dems angry about the Coalition, but it does appear to be the case here… doesn’t it?

Absolutely right. Nobody expects opposition parties to do well in mid-term by-elections and Labour was always expected to come fourth. Former Tory and Lib Dem voters who are sickened by the current government naturally see UKIP as the obvious party to support. Anyone who thinks Labour should try to appeal to such voters doesn’t understand politics.

GO: Eastleigh shows that the centrist (or ‘liberal’) LDs who win middle-class southern seats based on voters who think that a) Labour are a bit socialist but b) hating blacks and ladies and gays isn’t on, are sticking about. I’m struggling to work out how you’re getting “LDs go UKIP”.

The jury’s still out on the protest voters who went LD instead of Labour. Those seats (Clegg included) are yet to be tested in a bye-election. And I suspect will involve the LDs getting buggered.

John Jameson @4:

Major did have to contend with a recession, but the early-90s idiocy was nothing like the scope of the Great Recssion. Major had to deal with the fall-out from Back to Basics: Cameron has had to deal with the fact that his Chancellor is … not effective. Then there’s Labour / New Labour: back then, people still saw Labour as substantially and distinctly different from the Tories. The New Labour experiment has seriously eroded that, as it pulled the party into a centre-right, neo-liberal economics and authoritarian policy direction.

@John B
” I’m struggling to work out how you’re getting “LDs go UKIP”.”

The Lib Dem share of the vote went down by 14%. Polling showed that lots of UKIP voters were former Lib Dem voters and not just former Tory voters.

“Polling showed” – link please?

Eh, you’re right as well – see my new piece.