Labour comfortably won the Wythenshawe and Sale East byelection in Manchester on a sharply reduced turnout, repelling a Ukip challenge and leaving the two coalition parties wondering how they are going to make any progress in northern seats in the general election.

The Liberal Democrats lost their deposit for the eighth time in the 15 byelections in which the party has stood since 2010.

Labour's candidate, Michael Kane, retained the seat with 13,261 votes, a majority of over 8,000 on a low turnout of 28.24%. A total of 10,141 postal votes were cast and only 13,883 on the day.

Ukip's John Bickley came second with 4,301 votes, the Tories' Daniel Critchlow third on 3,479 votes and Mary di Mauro of the Lib Dems' trailing on 1,176 votes in a seat in which they once took more than 25% of the vote.

The byelection had been triggered by the death on 7 January of Labour MP Paul Goggins, 60, who had won the seat in four successive general elections.

Big hitters including Ed Miliband and Tory transport secretary Patrick McLoughlin have visited the constituency, with Labour sending a series of shadow ministers to drum up support.

The seat is mostly made up of the inter-war council estate of Wythenshawe, built to house the overspill population of Manchester and one of the largest council estates in the country. To the west is the more affluent suburb of Sale.

In 2010, Labour held the seat with a majority of 7,575, or 44.1% of the vote.

The Tories came second on 25%, Liberal Democrats third on 22% and Ukip polled 3.45%.

Nigel Farage, the Ukip leader, protested at the way in which postal ballots had been sent out within three days of the election being called. He said: "I have been on benders for longer than the opening of the nominations and the start of the postal ballots. This has been a farce."

Lucy Powell, the Labour MP for Manchester Central, accused him of sour grapes, saying that Farage had "predicted they might win 30% of the vote and they are very disappointed that Labour has increased its share of the vote. As a result Ukip want to turn this into a debate about process and tactics. Our vote has come out firmly and strongly."

Graham Brady, Conservative MP for Altrincham and Sale and chairman of the backbench 1922 committee, said: "It would be a mistake to read too much into a byelection with a 28% turnout." He said he was "psychologically unchallenged by the result".

Ukip will be pleased at coming second, garnering both Tory and Lib Dem votes, and will hope the result confirms it can supplant the Lib Dems as the main challenger to Labour in the north.

The result represents the sixth time Ukip has come second in a byelection since 2010, a considerable achievement for a party that would have seen a second place in a parliamentary byelection as an extraordinary achievement only four years ago.

Its second place share of the vote has varied from 11.8% in Middlesborough in November 2012 to 27.8% in Eastleigh last year. Ukip will also see the result as a good platform to do well in the European and local elections in May.

Yet Ukip will be privately disappointed that the result cannot be presented as confirming it represents a lethal threat to Labour in its traditional citadels, just as it threatens the Conservatives in the south.

It also suggests it is still some way from being able to win a parliamentary seat.

Ukip believes the speed with which Labour called the byelection, and the way in which Labour's superior organisation managed to capitalise on a largely postal vote, left the party with little freedom to build the momentum critical to springing a byelection surprise.

Farage had claimed Labour had fought a dirty byelection using bully boy tactics. His hopes of building any momentum were also thwarted by the media focus on the storms with political discussion shifting to climate change, and away from its strongest issues such as immigration, welfare and the EU.