Vote 24: What is the state of the parties?

Well, we’ve had a host of results, of course, we had those parliamentary by election results. We’re also going to get all of those mayoral numbers as well. But let’s just focus first of all, because this gives us a real sense of what’s going on in the bigger picture on those council elections, OK. And there’s the state of the parties. You can see what’s interesting about this actually, OK, is we’re looking not just at the the net gains and losses by seats, but you’re looking at just how many seats the parties won, but also how many they lost. So Labour, you can see one 241, but also lost 72. We’ll come back to that in a second. Lib Dems S up 93 but lost 13. Relatively good for the Lib Dems, but really it’s this Conservative number that’s the most striking up four but lost 422. So in net terms, down considerably, you know, striking losses there for for them. But the Green Party having a very good elections then other that other is quite significant, isn’t it? Because that partly explains where a lot of those Labour votes went and partly that can be explained by this. This is giving you a breakdown of those votes. We’ve looked at ward level data by from the least the lowest level of Muslim population up to the highest level of Muslim voters. And you can see that as areas become more predominantly Muslim, you can see that vote to Labour going down South, a big fall in areas with over 20% Muslim voters down by 17.9%, whereas in the rest of the country with lower levels of Muslim voters, actually a slight increase. So you see the the backlash against Labour’s Gaza policy really showing there. There was also of course a reversion from what we previously saw in the kind of Brexit period. So areas that were strong Brexit voters look like like Nuneaton, Bedworth, Cannock Chase as well, previously went Conservative. Now look at what happened this time around. Conservatives down 14 in Nuneaton, Labour up 15. In Cannock Chase. Conservatives down eleven, Labour up 11. So you’re seeing that direct transfer from one to the other, particularly in these seats in the West Midlands. Also have a look at this. OK, these elections, most of those numbers we’ve been looking at have been comparing the last time these seats were all four, that was in 2021, OK? And compared with them when the Conservatives were doing really well, Of course it’s a big fall for the Conservatives, big increase for the Labour Party. But now, crucially, compare what we’ve just heard about with 2023. So this is 2023 versus 2023, Conservatives down 2.5, Labour also down down by 1.2. And when you factor that into the national equivalent shed, just giving you a sense of what this might mean for a general election, have a look. Labour actually falling slightly according to our projections here, 35% in that latest share. But the real story here is the Conservatives down, down, down, down towards 26%, that’s the lowest share that they’ve had since 2013. And actually you really have to go back to the 90s, the kind of mid 90s to see any period where they were similar. But what’s striking as well, Look the Labour Party up there back then, but right now they are nowhere near as high as that, raising questions whether they can get that majority. But a bit proviso these numbers, particularly that grey line there, they are very much what you might see in a local election, but you’re unlikely to see something quite like that in a general election.