Local election trends for General Election

[heslingtonian]

Not sure if there's an existing thread for this but if not I thought it might be worth having a thread to try to extrapolate recent local election trends in predicting the next General Election outcome, especially in identifying potential surprises.

For example were there any clues from the local elections as to where the biggest swings against the Conservatives could come at the General Election?

I'd say the Liberal Democrats now have a real chance in seats like Henley, Berkhamsted & Harpenden and Mole Valley based on these results.

Maybe the Conservatives will have a better than expected chance of defending the likes of Peterborough and Harlow than the national polls would imply.

[The Bishop]

Quite possible in Harlow (though it also was *very* safe for the Tories last time, don't forget) but Peterborough is somewhere Labour have underperformed for a while at local level whilst still getting an MP in the 2017-19 period, so I maybe wouldn't be presuming job security yet if I was Paul Bristow.

[wysall]

If anything the Conservatives will have a worse than expected chance of defending Harlow.

[batman]

and of course Peterborough constituency is nothing like coterminous with the council area.

[mattbewilson]

Paul Bristow is likely gone if polls are right whatever happens in the locals. Rob Halfon is a very hard man to shift but the wave takes you whoever you are if the polls be true

[heslingtonian]

Which seats do people think will buck the trends at the next General Election and which will be the surprise gains? I've nominated Peterborough and Henley as potentially the former and the latter.

[jamie]

I’d be very careful about extrapolating individual council results into predictions of how the corresponding constituency will vote at the next general election. For every council where a party had an unusually good/bad result this year and goes on the repeat it in the general election, there will be another where it simply gets the sort of result the national picture suggests (or in some cases, the direct opposite of what the council election result suggested). Some councils are noticeably popular/unpopular, specific bits may feel neglected, local parties may be well/poorly organised etc. Furthermore, the Lib Dems, Greens and especially assorted independents would have done a lot worse in the general election if it had been held this month.

Also, be careful not to obsess over headline seat numbers/changes. I’ve seen a few cases where people have pointed to seats to suggest a good/bad indicator for the general election but the actual vote shares tell a different story eg; the Conservatives do well in seats but nonetheless suffer a big swing to Labour, or the Tories are near wiped out thanks to a ‘progressive alliance’ but don’t come out too bad on vote share (and their main general election challenger has consequently done little to no campaigning in many wards). 

[heslingtonian]

May 29, 2023 12:50:37 GMT jamie said:

I’d be very careful about extrapolating individual council results into predictions of how the corresponding constituency will vote at the next general election. For every council where a party had an unusually good/bad result this year and goes on the repeat it in the general election, there will be another where it simply gets the sort of result the national picture suggests (or in some cases, the direct opposite of what the council election result suggested). Some councils are noticeably popular/unpopular, specific bits may feel neglected, local parties may be well/poorly organised etc. Furthermore, the Lib Dems, Greens and especially assorted independents would have done a lot worse in the general election if it had been held this month.

Also, be careful not to obsess over headline seat numbers/changes. I’ve seen a few cases where people have pointed to seats to suggest a good/bad indicator for the general election but the actual vote shares tell a different story eg; the Conservatives do well in seats but nonetheless suffer a big swing to Labour, or the Tories are near wiped out thanks to a ‘progressive alliance’ but don’t come out too bad on vote share (and their main general election challenger has consequently done little to no campaigning in many wards). 

True, although in my experience establishing a strong local foothold can be a precursor to national success. Also the converse is true where an incumbent Party loses their councillor/activist base it can often lead to a General Election defeat.

[nyx]

The strength of the Green performance in Suffolk combined with the fact their co-leader is standing there makes me think they'll do well there. While a win would be a long shot, I fully expect the Greens to exceed 20% and come second in Bury St Edmunds and Waveney Valley.

[yellowperil]

May 29, 2023 12:50:37 GMT jamie said:

I’d be very careful about extrapolating individual council results into predictions of how the corresponding constituency will vote at the next general election. For every council where a party had an unusually good/bad result this year and goes on the repeat it in the general election, there will be another where it simply gets the sort of result the national picture suggests (or in some cases, the direct opposite of what the council election result suggested). Some councils are noticeably popular/unpopular, specific bits may feel neglected, local parties may be well/poorly organised etc. Furthermore, the Lib Dems, Greens and especially assorted independents would have done a lot worse in the general election if it had been held this month.

Also, be careful not to obsess over headline seat numbers/changes. I’ve seen a few cases where people have pointed to seats to suggest a good/bad indicator for the general election but the actual vote shares tell a different story eg; the Conservatives do well in seats but nonetheless suffer a big swing to Labour, or the Tories are near wiped out thanks to a ‘progressive alliance’ but don’t come out too bad on vote share (and their main general election challenger has consequently done little to no campaigning in many wards). 

Sadly, I have to agree with  all that (and was considering sending a post very much on those lines, but you got there first). I do wish it wasn't true, but I've seen it too many times to ignore it. That said, it sometimes comes off, and you have to be very clever to work out which local government success can be replicated in a general election. One can be pretty sure it will be a small share of the total local advances that do work at general election level- one in ten would be good.

[polupolu]

I suspect that the biggest problem with extrapolating from local elections to general elections is the differential turnout. Many (most?) of the people who vote in a general election do not bother to vote in a local election. Furthermore the general-election-only voters probably do not have the same profile, world-view, interest in political ideas, or sources of information as the vote-in-both voters. Add in that personal votes are unlikely to scale easily from a ward to a constituency and extrapolation gets harder still.

[swingometer]

Does anyone have a list of unchanged constituencies for the next general election please?

[Pete Whitehead]

vote-2012.proboards.com/thread/16730/2023-boundary-review-unchanged-constituencies

[swingometer]

May 1, 2024 16:39:24 GMT Pete Whitehead said:

vote-2012.proboards.com/thread/16730/2023-boundary-review-unchanged-constituencies

Thanks

[swanarcadian]

It would have been a lot more interesting had Sunak called the GE for tomorrow. In 1979, 1997 and 2010, the outgoing governing party made gains locally while losing those year’s general elections.

[Pete Whitehead]

May 1, 2024 21:33:13 GMT swanarcadian said:

It would have been a lot more interesting had Sunak called the GE for tomorrow. In 1979, 1997 and 2010, the outgoing governing party made gains locally while losing those year’s general elections.

But then 1976, 1993 and 2006 had all been very poor years for the governing party in local elections, whereas 2021 wasn't

[swanarcadian]

May 1, 2024 21:35:41 GMT Pete Whitehead said:

May 1, 2024 21:33:13 GMT swanarcadian said:

It would have been a lot more interesting had Sunak called the GE for tomorrow. In 1979, 1997 and 2010, the outgoing governing party made gains locally while losing those year’s general elections.

But then 1976, 1993 and 2006 had all been very poor years for the governing party in local elections, whereas 2021 wasn't

That is true. I do wonder though what difference holding the GE tomorrow might have made.

[Harry Hayfield]

In the local elections when the BBC actually used the local elections as a rehearsal for their general election results programme, they always used to make a direct comparsion of local elections to general elections. In one year I remember they had a list of 25 seats where all the seats had wards up tor election that year and when they totted them up, Gillingham was announced to have voted Liberal Democrat

[hullenedge]

May 1, 2024 21:40:27 GMT swanarcadian said:

May 1, 2024 21:35:41 GMT Pete Whitehead said:

But then 1976, 1993 and 2006 had all been very poor years for the governing party in local elections, whereas 2021 wasn't

That is true. I do wonder though what difference holding the GE tomorrow might have made.

If the polls are correct Tory losses but possibly not as severe. 2021 was an aberration because as we're aware it's uncommon for a government to have a comfortable lead at the locals...2017 (poor guide), 1992 (honeymoon), 1987 (good guide), 1982 (Falklands), 1960 (honeymoon) and 1945 (honeymoon).

[The Bishop]

This ties in with another discussion recently, in that 1945's local elections were actually late that year.