The Conservative vote in Hartlepool dropped considerably, leaving the party in fourth place for the first time in an English by-election since Liverpool Walton in 1991.

Robert Kilroy-Silk of UKIP initially suggested he might stand but later ruled this out, as did Hartlepool and Middlesbrough mayors Stuart Drummond and Ray Mallon.

Preceding by-elections had seen the Liberal Democrats come from third place to beat the Conservative Party, and in Brent East and Leicester South take seats from Labour.

The seat was safer (judging by the 2001 result) than Leicester but was vulnerable to swings such as achieved in Brent, or in Birmingham Hodge Hill where the Liberal Democrats narrowly failed to win.

Labour believed its performance good, for it came at the end of a very long campaign (effectively seventy-one days), and with a swing markedly smaller than in other seats over the previous year; the party also regarded the result – along with that in Hodge Hill – as a vindication of its decision to aggressively attack the Liberal Democrats and essentially ignore the Conservative challenge.