UK local elections, May 2018

[vileplume]

Barnet is interesting, even though on paper it requuires only the tiniest pick-up to be Labour gain. I think it might be the only "swing" (in ordinary situations) borough that voted Tory last election and Remain. The Tories, fwiw, won all three constituencies in the borough, although all in a marginal sense (with Hendon being only won by 106 votes). This was the 2014 result:



(Colindale isn't independent, it was delayed: Labour won all three seats. The split wards were Brunswick Park, where a Tory won; Hale, with one Labour and Childs Hill (one Lib Dem).

The big factor that led to a relative underperfomance in Barnet was the anti-Labour swing in the Jewish vote. We'll see if the party has repaired any of the damage here, especially in the wards with the most Jews like Golders Green, Finchley Church End, Edgware, Hendon and (Hampstead) Garden Suburb. Counteracting that is a big pro-Labour swing in Chipping Barnet, the seat that covers the NE of the borough (and also the least Jewish). Almost certainly a pick-up, but there may be odd ward swings. I think Labour will easily take the split wards (including Childs Hill, which is a three way marginal), and Oakleigh and may penetrate elsewhere in the borough (High Barnet? Totteridge?).

The Tories won the Hendon constituency by 1,072 votes, the 106 vote win was from 2010. Hendon was also probably the Tories least bad result in remain London.

I also think you are overestimating how well Labour will do in Barnet, I agree they will likely take the council but far more narrowly than you seem to expect. The Tory result in Barnet at the was not all that bad considering the borough voted 62.2% remain and thus I expect the Tories will do significantly better here than in remain voting inner London boroughs where they will suffer a much greater swing against them. As for the Jewish vote, they're already an extremely anti-Labour/pro-Tory demographic and nothing has happened in the last year to remotely change that.

Also it is worth noting that Labour's performance in Barnet (vs. the Tories) in the 2014 locals was already very strong so the scope for gains may be limited. On the other hand the one thing that may help Labour vs. last years general is that EU citizens have a vote and I think Barnet has a fair number of them though I'm unsure where in the borough they're concentrated.

-The wards you mention of 'Golders Green, Finchley Church End, Edgware, Hendon and (Hampstead) Garden Suburb' are safe Tory wards and Labour will be nowhere near to winning a seat in any of them.
-Labour will easily take the remaining Tory seat in Brunswick Park but this may well be counteracted by losing their seat in Hale to the Tories (possibly the only Con gain directly from Lab in the capital).
-As for the three fully Tory wards in Chipping Barnet (Oakleigh, High Barnet, Totteridge) it is likely the Tories will return full slates in all of them. Even with their poor performance in Chipping Barnet in the snap election they still would have been comfortably ahead in these three wards. Totteridge is especially safe.
-Childs Hill is not quite as easy for Labour to pick up as you presume because it is the only ward in the borough where the Lib Dems are remotely competitive so presumably they'll throw everything at it. A perfectly split Lib/Lab vote could allow the Tories to hold on though I don't think this is likely. However I would note the Tories probably either won or at least came relatively close to winning Childs Hill in the general (with Woodhouse, E Finchley, W Finchley going strongly Labour and Golders Green, Garden Suburb, Finchley CE going strongly Tory with Childs Hill being close). If the ward goes 3 LD though it could mean a hung council (and thus a Labour minority).
-The only other ward to watch is West Hendon where the demographics have become better for the Tories in the last couple of years with the regeneration of much of the council housing in the west of the ward. Whether Brexit has torpedoed their chances this time is yet to be seen though they were probably not all that far behind Labour in the snap election (it's Burnt Oak and Colindale where they get blown out of the water by ludicrous margins). A Labour hold is the most likely outcome but don't completely rule out at least a partial Tory gain. It's probably the key to them holding the council.

In conclusion I expect Labour will take Barnet albeit with a fairly slender majority.

[vileplume]

Are some councils expected to report results tonight? If so, any idea which ones might the first to come out (and what time - I'm assuming starting around 11pm or so in the UK?)?

These are estimated times of declaration:

http://election.pressassociation.com/Declaration_times/all_2018_by_time.php

The first 2 at ~00:30 are Broxbourne and Sunderland, neither of which are likely to be particularly interesting.

The first really interesting one is Swindon at 01:00. The Tories will very likely regain overall control of Basildon at this time too which means that if they also hold Swindon it will perhaps set the early tone of the evening off as 'Tories doing better than expected' (that is until London starts to come in).

[vileplume]

Any ideas on what caused the immense LibDem swing in Pallion (Sunderland)?

They picked up a seat in the ward in a by-election last year so it may be a Local Surge for Local People.

They're doing very poorly against the Tories as well though. They've jost lost Barnes and came very close to losing Doxford.

[vileplume]

Seems like the clear majority of the losses are because of Conservatives gaining virtually all the UKIP vote.

For example, the seat of Arbury had the Conservatives gain 23% from their last election, and UKIP got 24% in that seat.

Well in 2014 Labour beat the Tories 72-28 in a straight fight the Poplar ward (Nuneaton & Bedworth) but the Tories just gained that, so the UKIP collapse is not the whole story. Though tbf Bedworth is an area that Labour has been doing especially badly of late.

[vileplume]

If you look only at results outside of London, it looks like a strong night for the Tories. If you look only at results in London, it looks like a disaster for the Tories. Inverse for Labour, of course.

I don't see how that's true at all? The results in London are much better for the Tories than even more sensible briefings suggested - o/c they were defending poor results in much of the city from 2014.

The Tories have lost a bunch of ground in London overall but generally gained ground outside of London. Measuring relative to "expectations" is a futile task, but measuring next to prior results is actually helpful.

Yes, but nobody can deny that Labour have done a remarkably poor job of managing expectations. What looks like a average night or more or less a wash now looks like Lab loss. Wandsworth would have flipped easily under the expectations Labor were setting, but they couldn't capture that council.

Ramping over Kensington & Chelsea where they never really stood a prayer was especially strange considering half the battle in these elections is controlling expectation management.

[vileplume]

When a council is NOC, does the resulting coalition generally form along ideological lines (Con/UKIP vs Lab/LD/Grn) or have there been left-right coalitions in the past?

Labour/Tory coalitions are very rare, other than that, as a general rule, all things are possible and ideology rarely comes into it.

About Lab/Con coalitions, iirc these elecions were England-only. Still, has a mechanic developed in Scotland where the nationalist-unionist axis is stronger than the left right one?

Are there any scottish councils with Labour-Tory-Lib Dem unionist coalitions like we often get here in the Basque Country? (and probably will start getting in Catalonia soon as well)

I do vaguely recall that there have been Lab/Con anti-SNP coalitions in Scotland in local elections before. Not sure there are any tri-party coalitions in Scotland but it seems possible.

Not sure but a Tory-Labour-UKIP (lol) administration ran Portsmouth for a time overthrowing governing LDs.