English local elections, 5 May 2016

[YL]

The expectation seems to be that Labour have defeated the independent incumbent George Ferguson for mayor of Bristol.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

You can't say this has been a bad election for Labour.

Yeah, it hasn't been. I'm not sure why anyone is reading into this any bad omens.

It's a treading water election. It's alright. Which can be turned very easily (and accurately) into 'not good enough', although certain critics overshot things by expecting disaster. What you have to note is that what happened in the Welsh Assembly elections also happened in the locals; Labour held more seats (and so councils) than you'd expect given the falling vote share from when they were last up. A big factor there is that the government is unpopular and that the wind is out of UKIPs sails even if they've not vanished.

[YL]

Labour's Marvin Rees has indeed beaten George Ferguson to be Mayor of Bristol.  The council results there won't be announced until tomorrow; I think they'll be the last results to be declared.

[Vega]

As a side-note I have to say how odd it was not seeing David Dimbleby on election night. Glad he'll be doing the EU referendum coverage.

[YL]

Labour won overall control of Bristol City Council: Lab 37, Con 14, Green 11, LD 8.  (Because they won the mayoralty they actually had "control" anyway, but they also have a majority of councillors.)

The council website has a map:

[YL]

Sheffield vote share maps, with the numbers of councillors elected in each ward indicated.  The vote shares use the "top vote" method; the calculations were actually done by "iain" on VoteUK.

[YL]

Rotherham councillors elected: