British Local Elections, May 2024

[DL]

George Galloway is threatening to stand in the Greater Manchester mayoral election.

Make my day!

[DL]

FWIW, Labour’s polling has not changed since May 2023. The change in Conservative polling has been entirely down to Reform. Given Reform are contesting only a small minority of seats (and it’s unlikely the full swing to them is even real), it’s not clear that the Conservatives will do much worse than last year. 

The seats that are voting this year were last up in 2021 when the Tories had a good year so they will lose a vast number of seats

[DL]

So Khan is ahead 46-33 in a pure FPTP contest - presumably if London still used the preferential ballot his would scoop virtually all of the second preferences of Green and LibDem voters and the final count would be something like 63-37

[DL]

So Khan is ahead 46-33 in a pure FPTP contest - presumably if London still used the preferential ballot his would scoop virtually all of the second preferences of Green and LibDem voters and the final count would be something like 63-37

A large chunk of them would abstain so he would end up under 60%.

Presumably, much fewer people will vote for the smaller parties now that they know they cannot preference one of the major candidates - so no one wants to split the vote and have the wrong person win

[DL]

Worth noting that at the start of the year neither the West Midlands or Tees Valley race seemed close; in both cases Labour have picked local councillors with a relatively low profile (which is imho not the worse tactic!)

It’s a sign of the Tories impressive expectations management that they could lose 500 seats, and hang on with two popular (for different reasons!) incumbents- and it will get written up as a good night for them

Pardon my ignorance but when you say these contests did NOT seem close at the start of the year - is that because people assumed both would be easy Labour pickups in what promises to be a Tory meltdown in the locals or that because people assumed the Tory incumbents had enough personal popularity to be unbeatable?

[DL]

Anyone willing to make any predictions such as

How many seats do the Tories lose?
How many seats does Labour gain?
Who wins the West Midlands mayoralty?
Who wins the Teesside mayoralty?
Labour margin in Blackpool South

any other hot contests?

[DL]

What happens when you have single issue candidates (e.g. all about Gaza) who get elected to a local council and discover they will spend the next three years dealing with parking and dog runs?

[DL]

https://twitter.com/BritainElects/status/1786138663882989654

I presume this is based on recent polling trends and not on any exit polls from today?

[DL]

Where is Rushmoor?

[DL]

Projected National Vote Shares are Labour 34%, Tories 25%, Lib Dems 17%, Others 24%.

I wish they'd just do away with this bollocks.

Is this just England or do they try to project all of the UK even though no votes are being cast in Wales or Scotland?

[DL]

Isn't it also true that for demographic reasons the vote share in local elections often underestimates the national swing of Conservative to Labour? The turnout in locals tends to be far, far lower than in national elections and that means that the electorate will skew much older - and as we know just about the only demographic group where the Tories are still competitive are people over 65 (especially men over 75). The overwhelmingly Labour voting people who are under 35 are MUCH less likely to vote in local elections.

[DL]

Two questions:

1. Why would any Tories bother trying to spin that the London mayoralty was competitive?
2. Why would any sane observer of British politics have believed them?

[DL]

When has a recount EVER overturned a loss by over 100 votes let alone over 1,000?

[DL]

What is it about the southwest corner of London that makes it vote LibDem unlike any other part of the city?