Is Douglas Carswell trying to save his seat?

Nigel Farage has hailed Douglas Carswell's decision to resign his seat in the Commons and fight the resultant by-election as a Ukip candidate as "the noblest thing I've seen in British politics in my lifetime".

But is he right?

Could it even be that Carswell's decision results from a cool consideration of his own interests?

Because I have seen two pieces of evidence today that suggest Clacton is just about Ukip's best prospect at the next general election.

The first piece of evidence comes from Huffington Post:

According to research by professor Matthew Goodwin, from Nottingham University, and Manchester University's Rob Ford, Carswell's Clacton voters are the most Ukip-friendly in the entire country. 

Goodwin, co-author of the book Revolt On The Right, explained on his blog: "This is because the seat contains high concentrations of voters who are likely to be very receptive toward Nigel Farage: it has lots of pensioners, lots of voters without a degree, lots of voters with no educational qualifications and higher than average levels of economic disadvantage and unemployment. 

"UKIP tend to thrive in such communities --older, less well educated and insecure voters provide the ideal breeding ground for Farage's army. 

"Clacton is also very 'white', with high numbers of voters born in the country and few minorities, which again favours UKIP, who poll strongest in ethnically homogeneous areas."

The second from Cicero Elections:

In the 2010 General Election, UKIP didn’t enter a candidate to oppose Carswell, who won 22,867 votes. However, in the European elections, UKIP did turn up and absolutely stormed the polls, gaining 19,398 votes against the Tories’ 9,981. Winning almost 50% of the vote, UKIP performed better in Clacton than almost anywhere else in the country. It’s also worth noting that a further 1,500 people voted for other eurosceptic parties at the time. 

In the three months since the European elections, UKIP’s standing in the polls has not dropped and they have continued to do well in local elections in the South East of England.

So resigning as Conservative MP for Clacton to fight a by-election for Ukip may not be so noble after all.

No, the noblest resignation in Farage's lifetimes is probably that of Bruce Douglas Mann, who appalled his fellow defectors by resigning as Labour MP for Mitcham and Morden to fight a by-election as an SDP Alliance candidate when he knew he would almost certainly lose.

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