overwhelming victory in Thursday's Devonshire North by-election.

Ms Cox captured 71 percent of the vote to easily retain late Opposition Leader Frederick Wade's seat, suggesting that the PLP has strength among the key seats it needs to hold in the next general election.

Despite the low turnout -- which is fairly typical in a by-election where there were few controversial issues aired -- the PLP increased its share of the vote from the last general election, while the UBP saw its level of support slip. This went against the conventional wisdom that a low turnout favours the UBP.

The result must also be personally gratifying for Jennifer Smith. While this was not a referendum on her performance as PLP leader since Mr. Wade's death, a poor result would have reflected badly on her leadership of the Opposition.

This strong result will help her standing going into next month's party conference.

It is a dangerous trap to use by-election performances as harbingers of general elections and the Government does not have to go to the polls until 1998 and that is a long way off. But the PLP will surely be encouraged going into the next session of the House of Assembly by this result, despite the low turnout which suggests its get out the vote machinery is not yet running at full steam.

The UBP must surely wish that it had that kind of problem. While Stewart Greenslade's share of the vote (23 percent) was just 1.4 percent lower than the candidates who ran for the UBP in 1993, the number of voters turning out for the UBP plunged by 114 to 230 -- a drop of a third.

Traditionally, the UBP has excelled in getting its supporters out to vote and this simply did not happen in Devonshire North.

This may have been due to a weak performance by the party's machine, but it can also be seen as a rejection of the UBP's performance as a government. If Ms Smith can gain encouragement from the PLP's performance, then by the same token, Premier David Saul must see the result as a failure in his party's first electoral foray since he became leader.

Still, if the UBP's performance was poor, then the NLP's was disastrous.

Third parties often do better in by-elections than general elections and the NLP might reasonably have expected to siphon off votes from the UBP and to have capitalised on dissatisfaction among PLP supporters who felt they were being taken for granted. Instead Edwin Armstrong's share of the vote was 4.9 percent -- down from Austin Thomas's 7.9 percent in 1993 -- and he gained just 49 votes, barely a quarter of Mr. Thomas's in the general election.

As party leader Charles Jeffers said: "There are a lot of dissatisfied people out there but they do not see the NLP as an alternative. That is very sad.''