It has most likely escaped the notice of many in Watford, but there is another election battle being waged in the town alongside the police and crime commissioner race.

And in contrast to the comparably gentrified contest to become Hertfordshire’s first commissioner, this campaign is rapidly descending into a bad-tempered political bust-up.

The election to which I am referring is the Watford Borough Council Central by-election being fought on the same day as the commissioner vote, November 15, but with noticeably more vim.

Yet when one looks at the different political prizes on offer to the victors, it becomes difficult to fathom why the junior competition is generating so much more vigour and venom.

Whichever party triumphs in the police commissioner election will clinch the highest-paid (£75,000 pa), highest profile political job in the county.

In comparison, the victor of the Central by-election will win a Watford Borough Council seat with a £7,209 allowance and nugatory political clout.

However, this supposedly trivial by-election has crystallised the increasingly rancorous struggle between the town’s ruling Liberal Democrats and Labour opposition.

In this election, as in most in Watford, the political battle is mainly manifesting through the parties’ election leaflets. Residents in central Watford have had a welter of garish political pamphlets landing on their doormats, which are launching increasingly trenchant broadsides on the other party.

The backdrop to the current political brawl is a decade of Liberal Democrat dominance at Watford Town Hall, which was ushered in when the party deposed the previous ailing Labour administration and captured the newly-created elected mayor role in 2002.

The Lib Dems still hold the all-important mayoralty as well as an overwhelming majority – 24 – of the borough’s 36 council seats.

And at present, their dominance does not look to be under threat.

But at the last council election in May, the borough’s second largest party, Labour, gained two seats, to take their presence on the council from six to eight councillors.

Labour’s May gains were hardly a landside but clearly left its leadership feeling the political momentum was shifting their way.

After the election count in May the party’s then group leader Jagtar Singh Dhindsa, said: “I think their (the Lib Dems’) days are numbered in town hall. The dictatorship and arrogance won’t last forever. In the coming years we will be looking to take control.”

As well as displaying a penchant for hyperbole, Councillor Dhindsa’s comments also attest to a Watford Labour Party feeling emboldened. So when the Liberal Democrat councillor Chris Leslie resigned his central Watford seat last month to take up a job in the Midlands, it fired the starting pistol on a contest where both the Liberal Democrats and Labour are in contention.

The electoral history of central Watford is also one of Liberal Democrat domination. But over the last few years Labour has pulled itself into a closer second.

In 2004, Lib Dem Councillor Rabi Martins secured his seat with an impressive 50 per cent of vote, while Labour languished on a paltry 19 per cent.

Over the last three years the ward has been a more closely run affair. In 2010, when turnout was buoyed by the General Election, Labour won 34 per cent and were just pipped by the Lib Dems on 36 per cent.

In the last two years the Lib Dems have put more daylight between themselves and their Labour challengers, winning by six per cent in 2011 and then 16 per cent in 2012 (when the well-established Councillor Martins ran again).

Council by-elections are renowned for their low turnouts, which can warp results. However, the result of next week’s plebiscite will be an interesting one.

And if Labour do have the momentum, which they clearly feel, it could be a much closer race this time around.