The claim

“This matters because this is our 271st target seat. If we win this, looking forward to next year’s general election, all bets are off and the whole thing is up in the air.”
Nigel Farage, 20 November 2015

The background

Mark Reckless is the second Ukip MP to take his seat in the Commons after two by-election victories for the party in six weeks.

A jubilant Nigel Farage thinks the result in Rochester and Strood means the general election is now wide open. The Kent seat was not even one of Ukip’s big targets, the Ukip leader said – it was way down the list at 271.

Does this really mean Ukip could sweep the board next year?

The analysis

Mr Farage is drawing on research by academics Robert Ford and Matthew Goodwin, whose book about the rise of Ukip, Revolt on the Right, evidently has some fans within the party.

Ford and Goodwin have drawn up a list of the parliamentary seats they think are most “favourable” to Ukip, based on local demographics.

Research suggests that certain sections of society are more likely to vote Ukip than others, and by going through data from the 2011 census, the two academics are able to identify areas where the population are more likely to be receptive to the party’s message.

Pensioners, people who leave school with no qualifications and manual workers are apparently more likely to vote for Farage et al. Professionals, people with university degrees and members of ethnic minorities are likely to resist the message.

So working out the balance in the local population gives you an idea of whether Ukip could make inroads.

Ford and Goodwin do indeed put Rochester and Strood at number 271 in their ranking of seats most likely to fall to Ukip, but it’s important to recognise exactly what this number means.

The authors are not saying demographics are everything. A seat might be Ukip-friendly, but if another party has a massive majority, or Ukip does not have the local resources to fight an effective campaign, the party has little chance of capitalising on the favourable demographic trends.

For example, the census analysis suggests that white, working-class Rhondda in Wales is the Labour seat likely to be most receptive to Mr Farage’s overtures.

But with a massive Labour majority to overturn, and after attracting just over 1 per cent of the vote in 2010, Ukip would be unwise to throw the kitchen sink at Rhondda.

Ford and Goodwin make it clear that you have to look at demographics and politics to come up with a realistic list of seats likely to fall to Ukip next year.

Clacton – where Mr Reckless’s fellow Tory defector Douglas Carswell retained his seat last month to become Ukip’s first MP – was a “perfect storm” seat for the party. Both the demographics and the local political conditions were right.

Where also are conditions similarly favourable? Ukip has never confirmed or denied that this list of 12 seats leaked to Sky really does represent the party’s most wanted: South Thanet, North Thanet, Forest of Dean, Sittingbourne and Sheppey, Aylesbury, East Worthing and Shoreham, Great Yarmouth, Thurrock, Eastleigh, Portsmouth South, Boston and Skegness, Great Grimsby.

But many of these make sense. Recent research from the Fabian Society, which cross-references Ukip-friendly demographics with small majorities, confirms that South Thanet, Thurrock, Great Yarmouth and Great Grimsby are “high-risk and under direct threat from Ukip”.

It also fingers Conservative-held Waveney and Labour’s Dudley North, Plymouth Moor View, Rother Valley and Rotherham as ideal Ukip targets.

So much for Nigel Farage’s wish-list. How many seats are Ukip realistically likely to win?

Most pseophologists predict the party will only bag a handful of Westminster seats at best in May 2015. We’ve looked at a number of modelling approaches in previous FactChecks and they all suggest Ukip supporters might wake up disappointed after the election.

Most recent polls put national support for Ukip in the middle teens. Electoral Calculus predicts that the party would have to attract more than 20 per cent of the popular vote in 2015 to get into double figures for seats.

This is because the party probably doesn’t have the concentrated support in particular areas needed to turn support on a national level into actual election wins.

On the other hand, 12 months ago few pundits could have predicted that two Ukip MPs would be sitting in the Commons today. This is a party that is making a habit of confounding political pundit’s expectations.

Dr Robert Ford told us: “These models are conservative and backward-looking. They might not be wrong, but it makes sense to lean backwards a bit with new developments and be cautious.

“Now every Ukip activist on the doorstep will use Rochester as an example of how the other parties were wrong to say they couldn’t win.”

He thinks Rochester could be so significant that it might lead Ukip to gain as many as 10 or 12 seats – double the number predicted by many forecasters.

The verdict

It’s very interesting that Mr Farage should refer to Rochester and Strood as his party’s “271st target seat”. That suggests that he takes Ford and Goodwin’s demographic research pretty seriously.

But at the end of the day, Rochester doesn’t prove Ukip can win anywhere in the country. The seat may have only been Ukip’s 271st best prospect demographically, but the political conditions were unusually favourable.

The party is going to need both elements to win more parliamentary seats next year.

Most of the big election prediction models think Ukip MPs won’t reach double figures, even with a significant amount of national support.

But Farage and Co. always have the capacity to surprise.