Data analysis: Why Corbyn lost Copeland and Ukip crumbled in Britain's Brexit capital

The Conservatives pulled off a historic win in the Copeland by-election last night, snatching the constituency from Labour for the first time in its history.

Despite this embarrassing loss, Labour managed to successfully fend off a challenge from Ukip and their leader Paul Nuttall in the second by-election of the night in Stoke Central.

Did Corbyn lose it for Labour in Copeland?

While by-elections are generally greeted with a certain degree of apathy from the electorate, making them poor predictors of general elections, Jeremy Corbyn's party will be very concerned about their loss in Copeland.

In 2015 Jamie Reed, whose resignation triggered the by-election, won 42.3 per cent of the vote - comfortably ahead of the Conservatives who finished on 35.8 per cent.

Copeland by-election results

However, Trudy Harrison - Copeland's new MP - won 44.2 per cent of yesterday's vote, a big gain of more than eight percentage points.

Labour, in contrast, lost five percentage points in vote share, compared to their 2015 effort and thus lost the constituency for the first time since it was formed in 1983.

This loss is hugely significant for Labour as opposition parties hardly ever lose seats in by-elections. The public generally use the opportunity to deliver a blow against whoever is in power but on this occasion no anti-establishment feeling presented itself.

Copeland by-election results table

Unfortunately there are no exit polls for by-elections so it's not possible to know who switched their vote to the Conservatives or why. But we can make an educated guess.

Copeland is the home of the Sellafield  nuclear decommissioning site which employs thousands of people in the area. Jamie Reed was a big advocate for Sellafield - indeed he resigned to go and work at the plant - but Jeremy Corbyn's lukewarm approach to protecting jobs there seems to have put voters off.

It seems that protecting these jobs was more important to voters in the area than the proposed closure of maternity services at Copeland hospital - something that Labour were relying on to fuel their vote.

Elsewhere in Copeland, the Liberal Democrats made gains while Ukip's vote share fell by more than half from 15.5 per cent to 6.5 per cent.

Ukip couldn't win in the UK's Brexit capital

Stoke Central has been dubbed the UK's Brexit capital due to the very high proportion of voters in the constituency who voted to leave the EU last June.

It should, based on this, have been fertile ground for Ukip - especially given that the party put forward their leader, Paul Nuttall to contest the seat.

Stoke Central by-election results

However, the Ukip surge didn't materialise with little changing in terms of vote share compared to the results in the 2015 election.

Labour's vote share fell from 39.3 per cent to 37.1 per cent, while Ukip gained 2.5 percentage points in vote share - far from the be leaps that were expected.

Last night's results in Stoke will be nearly as worrying to Ukip's leadership as the Copeland result will be to Labour's, given their failure to capitalise in favourable conditions.

Stoke-on-Trent Central by-election | Candidates

While their failure in Stoke could be partly ascribed to the problems surrounding their leader, their losses in Copeland were heavy.

These results are a backwards step compared to the party's performance in 2015 when they finished second place in many seats.

In the post-EU referendum age, Ukip may well have lost its allure.