English local elections 2011

[Chancellor of the Duchy of Little Lever and Darcy Lever]

Bolton.  Currently Lab 30 C 21 LD 7+1 vacancy Astley Bridge First 1.  Labour hold half the seats and need just one gain for an overall majority.

2007 results:


ASTLEY BRIDGE is normally a solid Conservative ward, but the sitting councillor has formed his own outfit called Astley Bridge First after being deselected.  For what it's worth, my quiz team plays out of this ward's Conservative club.

BRADSHAW, BROMLEY CROSS and HEATON WITH LOSTOCK are three of the safest Tory wards in the whole of Greater Manchester.  In 2008 the Conservatives polled more than 70% in Heaton.

SMITHILLS was the only ward the Lib Dems won last year, and that was a regain after their councillor defected to Labour.  He ran for re-election and did well to take second place from the Conservatives.  On the 2010 result it looks just about winnable for Labour but Labour have never won here and the ward has elected Lib Dems since about 1989.

HALLIWELL, CROMPTON, TONGE WITH THE HAULGH, GREAT LEVER and RUMWORTH cover inner Bolton.  Some of these wards had weird results in 2004 (the Lib Dems winning Crompton, the Tories winning seats in Great Lever) but Labour have reasserted their dominance as the Iraq war fades into the past.  All these wards apart from Tonge have a significant Muslim population (particularly Rumworth).

BREIGHTMET and LITTLE LEVER AND DARCY LEVER are basically white working-class areas.  Breightmet has a nasty reputation but does have some nice bits in addition to the dodgy bits, while Little Lever used to be an urban district of its own.  The Tories won both wards in 2008; last year Labour were well ahead in Breightmet but Little Lever was quite close, mainly because the defending Labour councillor stood as an independent and polled 17%.

KEARSLEY was safe Labour in 2010 but in previous years was a Labour/LD marginal.  In 2007 this ward had the closest result, the Lib Dems prevailing by 27 votes.

FARNWORTH and its twin ward HARPER GREEN are very safe for Labour.  HULTON is a divided ward between middle-class (and very Tory) Over Hulton and more working-class Deane on the outskirts of Bolton; on th 2007 results its looks winnable for Labour but it swung to the Conservatives last year as their re-elected councillor was also their general election candidate for Bolton South East.

The two WESTHOUGHTON wards were three-way marginals even in 2010, with Labour gaining South from the Lib Dems and the Conservatives holding North.  Anything could happen here.

HORWICH AND BLACKROD has become a Tory/Labour marginal with a significant Lib Dem vote.  Labour picked up the seat last year for the first time.

Finally, HORWICH NORTH EAST was the shock result of the 2010 election.  Despite the name this ward covers most of Horwich and is normally a Lib Dem banker with Labour running third, but 2010 saw a very even three-way split with Labour prevailing by 90 votes over the Lib Dems and the Tories just 183 votes further back.  Both remaining Lib Dem seats are up as the two remaining councillors (who are husband and wife) are standing down.

PREDICTIONS: Labour to gain Kearsley from the Lib Dems and Horwich/Blackrod and Westhoughton North from the Conservatives.  Conservatives to regain Astley Bridge making the council Lab 33 C 20 LD 7.

[Chancellor of the Duchy of Little Lever and Darcy Lever]

The English Democrats have no councillors.  (There's only been one Council election since Davies was elected mayor, and that was on General Election day.)  They're standing in the majority of the wards outside the main core of Doncaster town; I'd guess they will have some populist appeal but hopefully they won't actually win anywhere.

The only ward where the English Democrats had any kind of track record before Davies was elected mayor was the Tory stronghold of Finningley, where Davies was the candidate.  Between 2006 and 2008 he consistently finished second in that ward with just over 20%.

[Chancellor of the Duchy of Little Lever and Darcy Lever]

Westerhope is in Newcastle upon Tyne for those who were confused.

[Chancellor of the Duchy of Little Lever and Darcy Lever]

Shameless self-promotion time: for comparison go to
http://www.andrewteale.me.uk/leap/councils/2007
for the 2007 results.

Or, if you want to download the lot, the 751-page book is now available: http://www.andrewteale.me.uk/pdf/2007/2007.pdf
Don't all rush at once

[Chancellor of the Duchy of Little Lever and Darcy Lever]

Lab gain Wavertree (Liverpool) from former LD council leader.

Christ.

He's not the Messiah, he's a very naughty boy.

Oh, sorry, thought you were talking about Bradley...

[Chancellor of the Duchy of Little Lever and Darcy Lever]

Rumours of six Labour gains in Bolton.

[Chancellor of the Duchy of Little Lever and Darcy Lever]

Bolton has finished counting.  New council Lab 35 C 20 LD 5.

Lab gain from C
Horwich and Blackrod
Westhoughton North and Chew Moor

Lab gain from LD
Horwich North East (2)
Kearsley

[Chancellor of the Duchy of Little Lever and Darcy Lever]

BBC report that the Conservatives have gained overall control of Boston from the Bypass Independents.  C 19 Others 10 Lab 3.

[Chancellor of the Duchy of Little Lever and Darcy Lever]

Lab gain from LD
Horwich North East (2)

An illustration of the Lib Dem rout in the Mets - Horwich now has no Lib Dem councillors for the first time in many years.  (The old unified Horwich ward was consistently Lib Dem at least since 1996.)  When Labour gained Horwich NE last year I thought it was a fluke - I was wrong.

[Chancellor of the Duchy of Little Lever and Darcy Lever]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Wait, so where did all the other Labour gains in Lincoln come from? LDs and/or some indy group annihilated?

Lincoln is basically a two-party state.  Poor phrasing from the beeb: Labour won six wards = five holds + one gain (presumably Glebe ward).

[Chancellor of the Duchy of Little Lever and Darcy Lever]

BBC report Labour have gained Chesterfield from the Lib Dems.  That required a swing of over 16%.

[Chancellor of the Duchy of Little Lever and Darcy Lever]

LOL!

Bury had a draw in Ramsbottom ward. Which was decided by a drawing of lots (after two recounts). Which Labour won. Which gave them a majority on the council - 26 Labour, 20 Conservative, 5 LDs. (There were 17 seats up this year; not sure how they split but Labour made 6 gains - 3 from the Tories incl. Ramsbottom, 3 from the LDs.)

My family live in Bury.  Here be the map:

[Chancellor of the Duchy of Little Lever and Darcy Lever]

Is there a list of councils which are up in 2012?

Keith Edkins has an excellent one: http://www.gwydir.demon.co.uk/uklocalgov/

[Chancellor of the Duchy of Little Lever and Darcy Lever]

[Chancellor of the Duchy of Little Lever and Darcy Lever]

Hartlepool
Lab 45.6% (+12.3%)
Con 23.8% (+9.2%)
Ind 17.6% (-2.7%)
UKI  8.2% (-3.3%)
Lib  3.7% (-15.3%)
BNP  1.0% (-0.3%)

whee...

Haha. I think this Manchester graph better represents that:


(sorry about the triple-posting, it seemed better to keep them seperate)

Nah, I think this map better represents it:



Well done on a good job BTW.

[Chancellor of the Duchy of Little Lever and Darcy Lever]

Was that Labour map really necessary?

Haha, quite. The only reason was consistency.

Fixed that for you

[Chancellor of the Duchy of Little Lever and Darcy Lever]

Region;

Hertfordshire:

Broxbourne          Dacorum             E. Hertfordshire    Hertsmere           N. Hertfordshire
Con 63.1% (-0.9%)   Con 53.4% (+2.1%)   Con 58.2% (+10.6%)  Con 59.6% (+0.1%)   Con 48.4% (+1.4%)
Lab 26.1% (+7.1%)   Lab 25.7% (+7.3%)   Lab 19.4% (+8.4%)   Lab 29.0% (+8.8%)   Lab 22.9% (+4.4%)
EDP  4.7% (+4.7%)   Lib 18.2% (-2.7%)   Lib 12.9% (-6.1%)   Lib 10.3% (-3.6%)   Lib 17.6% (-8.1%)
UKI  2.4% (+2.4%)   Grn  2.0% (-3.5%)   Ind  9.2% (-8.6%)   UKI  0.9% (+0.9%)   Grn  8.2% (+0.8%
Ind  1.9% (+1.9%)   Ind  0.5% (-2.1%)   TUS  0.2% (+0.2%)   [Grn 3.9% (-3.9%)]  UKI  1.9% (+1.0%)
Lib  1.7% (-1.1%)   EDP  0.2% (+0.2%)   [Grn 2.8% (-2.8%)]  [SLP 1.2% (-1.2%)]  Ind  0.7% (+0.2%)
[BNP13.3% (-13.3%)] [N-F 1.3% (-1.3%)]  [BNP 1.0% (-1.0%)]  [Ind 1.1% (-1.1%)]  EDP  0.2% (+0.2%)
[N-P 0.5% (-0.5%)]                      [UKI 0.6% (-0.6%)]
[N-F 0.4% (-0.4%)]

St. Albans          Stevenage           Three Rivers        Watford             Welwyn Hatfield
Con 42.5% (+1.4%)   Lab 46.8% (+0.0%)   Lib 42.5% (-12.4%)  Lib 36.7% (-10.3%)  Con 53.6% (-0.9%)
Lib 29.3% (-9.3%)   Con 31.2% (+1.1%)   Con 38.2% (+2.5%)   Lab 28.0% (+10.5%)  Lab 30.1% (+5.0%)
Lab 19.6% (+6.5%)   Lib 10.3% (-11.0%)  Lab 15.7% (+8.0%)   Con 23.5% (-0.7%)   Lib 13.2% (-3.5%)
Grn  8.3% (+1.1%)   UKI 10.0% (+10.0%)  UKI  2.5% (+1.8%)   Grn  9.9% (-0.7%)   Grn  2.8% (-0.8%)
Ind  0.3% (+0.3%)   TUS  1.2% (+1.2%)   EDP  0.7% (+0.7%)   UKI  1.1% (+1.1%)   Ind  0.2% (+0.2%)
                    Grn  0.4% (-0.4%)   Grn  0.3% (-0.7%)   Ind  0.7% (+0.0%)
                    [BNP 1.0% (-1.0%)]

A great job you've done here collating all these results.  One thing that worries me is that my figures disagree with yours for Dacorum and for East Hertfordshire (I've only done this for Hertfordshire other than the Met boroughs).  It could be my figures are wrong, but I suspect there is a difference in methodology.  I have taken the highest polling candidate for each party in each ward rather than using the (admittedly superior) average method. Looking at your Waveney score though it appears you may not have used either of these systems, but rather added all the votes cast, which means that in districts such as these where there are mixtures of 1,2 and 3 members the results can be heavily skewed. (I got involved in a bit of a debate about this re: Gravesham where adding together all votes cast gave Labour a plurality - falsely in my view).  If you have used this method the figures would not only be wrong in themselves, but the changes in vote share would be misleading as in the case of Dacorum, the changes would appear to be from the figures here (http://www.andrewteale.me.uk/leap/results/2007/227/) where top vote method has been used. IN other words you would not be comparing like with like.

*I know its only 20 posts, but this is the most annoying rule

Fixed that for you Pete - and welcome to the forum.

I use the top vote method mainly because it's easier to calculate.

[Chancellor of the Duchy of Little Lever and Darcy Lever]

Bolton. Which also includes Westhoughton, Horwich, Blackrod, etc (but anyone reading this knows that already). The BNP candidate in Tonge with The Haulgh polled 9%, but they ran no one else so get no map.

No prizes for guessing the source of the original outline map.

Anyway. The winning parties map looks oddly pretty with all the colours and shades contrasting and complementing each other to a greater degree than normal.

Very pretty.  I'm nicking that back off you.

Given the amount of stuff I got through my door, lol @ Labour in Smithills getting the lightest red shade.

The Lib Dem and Green maps are the most interesting ones for me.  Of the five wards with any significant Lib Dem share, four were the ones they were defending and the other is Little Lever, which is very odd as I don't think the Lib Dems have ever come close there.  This, lest we forget, is the party that had the most seats on the council from 2004 to 2006.

The Green map is best described all over the place.

[Chancellor of the Duchy of Little Lever and Darcy Lever]

Shameless self-promotion time: for comparison go to
http://www.andrewteale.me.uk/leap/councils/2007
for the 2007 results.

Or, if you want to download the lot, the 751-page book is now available: http://www.andrewteale.me.uk/pdf/2007/2007.pdf
Don't all rush at once

The book is now finished  with the last seven counties added to it.  824 pages now and just over 2MB.  Same link as before, please form an orderly queue.

There are also some spreadsheets you can download the entire 2007 results from: England Scotland

[Chancellor of the Duchy of Little Lever and Darcy Lever]

Anyways, local politics in Donny is seriously fycked up, but then you all knew that anyway.

True, but I don't think it's particularly reflected in these results.  Perhaps once Peter Davies has gone it will return to something close to normality.

Did you really just use Peter Davies and normality in the same sentence?

[Chancellor of the Duchy of Little Lever and Darcy Lever]

In terms of seats the Tories didn't do too badly to get their six to Labour's ten - their two gains from the Liberals were won on low thirties, with Labour at late twenties and Green/TUSC vote surpassing 10%. Could've easily been 3/13 when you include the Freemantle seat.

Which is why Labour will probably take control next year - the Tories will be defending 14 out of 16.

[Chancellor of the Duchy of Little Lever and Darcy Lever]

"Eager for sheep"? Have you gone all Newzealander on us?

This is our team name for the upcoming European Quiz Championships.  (We wanted Cymdeithas Cwis Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch but it won't fit on the leaderboard.)  Blame the guy in my sig.

[Chancellor of the Duchy of Little Lever and Darcy Lever]

I get the impression that map isn't going to change much for a while.  The weakest Conservative ward - Walkden South - actually swung towards the Tories between 2010 and 2011.

The Tory strength in Kersal - at the top right - is explained by the very high Jewish population.  Eccles ward (in the centre of the map) has a middle-classish area in it called Monton, which may also explain the high UKIP vote.