A close analysis of the local election results

Well, we’re just waiting for one council still to declare, but we’ve got a pretty full picture of how everything’s played out. You can see here from our tally that Labour are way out in the lead with over 1000 seats. It’s the Conservatives who had a really bruising 48 hours, losing basically half the seats that they were defending. This graphic is useful because it shows us the churn that’s happening behind the scenes. And you can see that Labour yeah, they picked up 200 and 57 seats, but they lost 72. And it looks like the party is having some problems on its left flank with progressives, younger voters and Muslim voters who are angry about its position on the conflict in Israel and Gaza. It may explain why the Greens and the independent parties are having a good night. We can also see that reflected in our national equivalent vote share. That’s when we take a look at the the results that we’ve had and we project them up onto a national level. And you can see that Labour since 2021 that was the Conservatives highest ebb when they were benefiting from that vaccine roll out, have picked up votes. But they’re not doing anything like as well as they were doing in the 90s during the Blair era. And that can partly be explained by the fact that independent smaller parties are a much bigger force in local politics these days. You can see that playing out here because Labour over the past year, well, the vote share has actually dipped, Not so much as the Conservatives, however, so they might not be too worried about it. But it’s the independence that are causing both parties problems Now. Some caveats to bear in mind. How would all of this play out in a general election? Well, when it comes to independent, smaller parties, people may be more feel more empowered to vote for them in local elections, but may not necessarily do the same in the general election. They may coalesce around the bigger parties. Also, this doesn’t factor in Scotland and Scotland will be a really important factor in the general election. We know Labour are eyeing up a number of seats north of the border overall. Fair to say it’s been a disappointing 48 hours for the Conservatives. There was that crushing defeat in the by election in Blackpool South as well, and also in the mayoral contests. We’ve just got that result in from the West Midlands. But you can see our mayoral map is looking even more red than it was before we went into this. There’s that tiny patch of blue over there. That’s the Tees Valley where Ben Houghton has held on to the morality over there. But if we drill further into the data here, we can see that his majority has been significantly reduced from 73% in 2021. Worth bearing in mind there are only two candidates running there, so that might partly explain why it was so large to 54%. Undoubtedly been hurt by the Conservatives popularity despite running a largely personal campaign, didn’t wear the rosette on stage, omitted any reference to the Conservatives or many references to the Conservatives in his campaign literature, but has held on to that. Andy St. however, wasn’t so lucky. It was a tense, tense battle, but in the end the mayor, former mayor, missed out to Labour. That will worry the Conservatives and disappoint the Prime Minister.