When I visited Rochester on the 10th November, two waiters stood on the high street with cigarettes smouldering in their hands, mouths open, surveying the chaos before them. “Is this all for new government?” one asked the other in a continental accent. “I don't know,” replied his friend, before heading back into his cafe. The first waiter paused, shook his head, stubbed out his fag and headed back in after him. “Politics,” he shrugged to a customer as she passed him on her way out.

Yep, politics has truly come to Rochester, and will remain there until tomorrow morning, when the results of today's decisive Rochester and Strood by-election are in. The waiters were watching a now-typical Saturday scene: great rampaging clouds of Ukip and Tory activists. Socialist workers trading insults with Ukippers (“fascists!” “you're the facists” etc). Rosettes from unfamiliar parties like the “patriotic socialists,” whose candidate Dave Osborn told me “I don't know a great deal about politics... [but] I'm learning a lot.” Cabinet ministers and Prime Minister himself have visited the constituency in droves, with little discernable effect other than giving us some excellent shots of Michael Gove.

But amid the madness, there are important lessons to be learned from this by-election—which the Conservatives look almost certain to lose to Ukip. Here are some key points to take from the fight between the two parties (sorry Labour, you've hardly been in this one):

Get in early

Ukip got their boots on the ground first, which has likely helped shore up the advantage they already have in fielding Reckless as a well-known face. Just days after Reckless announced his defection to an ecstatic crowd at Ukip party conference in September, the party had moved a skeleton campaign team into the constituency, taking up residence in a former fantasy memorabilia store on the high street (when I first visited it in early October it still had a strange toadstool mural on the wall). The Conservatives, meanwhile, opted for a time-intensive postal primary. It was designed to involve local voters, but in the event it attracted little attention and cost the Conservatives weeks (they didn't confirm local businesswoman Kelly Tolhurst as their candidate until 23rd October). This may partly explain why almost half of 2010 Conservative voters in the constituency have crossed the floor with Reckless: in the absence of an alternative familiar face, they were happy to follow the man they know and seem to like.

Local isn't everything

The by-election fight has been fiercest during slanging matches over regional issues. Reckless kicked things off by highlighting his record of campaigning against a “Boris Island” airport in the Thames estuary. Once the Tories had Tolhurst—daughter of a boat builder from the nearby village of Borstal, no less—they positioned her as a truly local candidate, as against Reckless's career politician. “I'm a local person, so I want somebody like me representing this area,” she told me when I met her. The first serious Tory attack on Reckless centred on his flip-flopping over support for a nearby housing development. The bottom line is it hasn't stuck. Despite the fact that Reckless was educated at a public school that was both posh and not in Kent, he has remained steadfastly ahead. According to a Lord Ashcroft poll, the main reason voters in Rochester have given for their choice of party is “they have the best policies on particular issues I care about.” Could it be that voters in this bustling stretch of commuter-belt Britain care about things that happen more than a few streets away?

Don't out-Ukip Ukip

The one national issue which has drowned out regional finger-pointing during the contest has been, surprise surprise, immigration. First on Kelly Tolhurst's “six point plan” for the area is to lobby the Prime Minister for “action—not just talk—on immigration.” The problem is that, if you aren't partial to immigrants from the EU, whatever any other party offers it's not going to beat Ukip's promise to leave the EU. When I met Tolhurst, she insisted she was confident that David Cameron would secure a satisfactory new deal for Britain's EU membership. But voters aren't (earlier this year, as many as three quarters of them were sceptical, according to an Ashcroft poll), and that will hold Tolhurst back. Interestingly, when I asked her she did not rule out campaigning for a British exit from the EU under any circumstances, saying it was too early to answer the question before the renegotiation. Mark Reckless, meanwhile, ran into trouble yesterday after he made controversial comments some interpreted as suggesting that EU migrants might have to leave in the event of a British exit, but the row is unlikely to damage his chances today.

Slamming Ukip doesn't work

It may not be pretty, but there have been many examples of successful negative campaigning in British politics. Unfortunately for the Tories, Ukip have proved time and again to be immune to the tactic. In the run-up to the European elections in May, their support swelled in the face of a sustained media onslaught. In Rochester they've held their own despite the attack ad, leaflets claiming Reckless is only in the race for the purpose of “political point-scoring,” the somewhat dubious claim that returning a Ukip MP will harm local house prices, and other smears. Tory strategists need to understand that they are facing a party whose conference's merchandise stall included a mechanical cupboard displaying the message “there are no racists inside or outside this closet”. Ukip makes a virtue of the abuse it suffers at the hands of the main parties. Turning up the heat won't beat it, at least not before May.