Mark Reckless wins Rochester & Strood for UKIP

Mark Reckless has won the by-election in Rochester & Strood with 42.1% of the vote and will return to parliament as UKIP's second MP.

The majority was less than some predicted but it's just under 3,000 and over 7% which is pretty healthy. The Tories are trying to spin the defeat as a positive and claim that because the margin is smaller than they predicted, they can win the seat back in 2015. It looks like their target seat maths is as dodgy as the maths they used to predict the UKIP margin because Mark Reckless' 2,090 vote majority makes it the 125th largest majority in the country.

The Tories came a respectable but still fairly distant second whilst Labour finished in third place more than 25% behind UKIP. The Green Party finished in fourth with 4.22%, just missing the magic 5% that would have kept their deposit and the Lib Dems were relegated to fifth place with 0.87% of the vote and were only spared the embarrassment of losing to the Monster Raving Loony Party (something normally reserved for the English Democrats who didn't stand in this by-election) by 198 votes. Britain First's lowly 9th place with just 56 votes shows that their clever social media propaganda machine hasn't turned them into a credible electoral force.

Well done to all involved in the election campaign, the activists that travelled from all parts of the UK and beyond to campaign for Mark Reckless and of course to Mark Reckless himself for the brave decision to resign following his defection and contest his seat as a UKIP candidate. Your hard work paid off, you have helped to make history.

Candidate	Party	Votes	%
Mark Reckless	UKIP	16,867	42.10%
Kelly Tolhurst	Conservative	13,947	34.81%
Naushabah Khan	Labour	6,713	16.76%
Clive Gregory	Green	1,692	4.22%
Geoff Juby	Lib Dem	349	0.87%
Hairy Knorm Davidson	Loony	151	0.38%
Stephen Goldsbrough	Independent	69	0.17%
Nick Long	People Before Politics	69	0.17%
Jayda Fransen	Britain First	56	0.14%
Mike Barker	Independent	54	0.13%
Charlotte Rose	Independent	43	0.11%
Dave Osborn	Patriotic Socialist	33	0.08%
Christopher Challis	Independent	22	0.05%