UK local elections, May 2012

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And in case, people are wondering about Cardiff, here is the result in 2008 (with the change on 2004)
Conservatives 70,238 votes (28% +7%) winning 17 seats (+5 seats)
Labour 68,024 votes (27% -3%) winning 13 seats (-14 seats)
Liberal Democrats 66,940 votes (26% -7%) winning 35 seats (+2 seats)
Plaid Cymru 32,120 votes (13% +3%) winning 7 seats (+4 seats)
Independents 11,685 votes (5% +3%) winning 3 seats (+3 seats)
Others 5,215 votes (2% -1%) winning 0 seats (unchanged)
Conservative lead of 2,214 (1%) on a swing of 5% from Lab to Con
No Overall Control, Liberal Democrats short by 3

Bizarre numbers. Their fall in May will be steep there, in terms of seats, with majorities like what they must have in Cardiff wards...

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Do we have a London mayor thread? Because, erm... .

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All kicking off over at my own council as well (Wirral).

http://www.wirralnews.co.uk/wirral-news/local-wirral-news/west-wirral-news/2012/02/01/wirral-council-leadership-in-crisis-over-no-confidence-votes-80491-30235739/

9-month old Labour minority will probably be chucked out for a Tory minority before the election. Things could get interesting when the Tories (presumably) lose seats in May.

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Joe Anderson's been a fairly good council leader from what I gather, atleast compared to Warren Bradley (not that that says much). He'll win.

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My polling card came today. This election'll be my first.

/attentionwhoring

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http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/03/29/liam-byrne-to-quit-shadow_n_1388155.html?ref=uk

Hope the door doesn't hit him on the way out.

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Labour held their campaign launch today in Birmingham btw.

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Labour held their campaign launch today in Birmingham btw.

It's the obvious place.

Of course.

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...and confirmation that the attention of Respect has shifted elsewhere has come with the news that there will be no Respect candidate in Sparkbrook.

Joke party.

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No Lib Dem candidates in the marginal Lab-Con wards of Angela Eagle's constituency (next door to me).

Tory-Lib Council
Tory-Lib Government

Monkey see-Monkey do

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Labour's first PPB
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=radTKsTJPNE&feature=youtu.be

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Pointless bit of trivia for any internationals reading this, but the last time Labour made gains on this cycle of seats was in 1995 when they secured 48% of the English vote.

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Pointless bit of trivia for any internationals reading this, but the last time Labour made gains on this cycle of seats was in 1995 when they secured 48% of the English vote.

even with a moderately favourable set of councils up, that is a ridiculous result for labour, they'll probably not get that again for another 15 years I reckon

Of course Labour (or even the Tories for that matter) won't see that for a good, long time. It was Blair's first locals and Tony Blair was unhumanly popular right from 1994 until Iraq.

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Liberals only fighting 70% of seats, the lowest since 2000.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9200703/Three-in-10-council-seats-not-contested-by-Liberal-Democrats-at-local-elections.html

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I'd be interested to see party contesting rates through the years. It says at least 12 years, which opens the door for it being a much longer record (certainly the '00/'04/'08 figures it quotes all hover around 80%, whereas these are at 70%).   

If you go by election results alone, we could be looking at 1989/1990.

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Just looking at the raw figures we have from the past few years, I can only really see the LibDems holding on in Eastleigh and that council which is basically the Westmoreland seat. They'll get 3, if they're lucky, down from 7.

If we're to take the most recent ICM (38-37-13 to Labour) as gospel (which, of course, we shouldn't for many reasons), we'll be seeing a Con>Lab swing of 10.5% and a Lib>Lab swing of 18%, if we work from the projected national swing in 2008.

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2012 and 2013 locals will be very good for Labour, given how 2008 and 2009 were bad.

2012, on paper, should be excellent. But them again, 2011 was meant to be, but we under performed and the Tories did much better than expected.

2013 should be good, but it's not like many of the seats are in the heartlands.

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And the award for Cheesiest Party Political Broadcast of the Year goes to Arrogant Alex and the Balamory Party:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01dd1mt/Party_Election_Broadcasts_Scottish_Local_Elections_2012_Scottish_National_Party_16_03_2012/

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Glasgow SNP leader has an interesting moment at the hustings.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRkyugSQeh4

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It's happened...
http://cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_uploads/document/4v1i2t5nh2/YG-Archives-Pol-Sun-results-160412.pdf

So, are the LibDems now technically an "Other"?

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What are the BNP polling numbers looking like?  I heard they are down which is surprising as usually extremist parties tend to do best during bad economic times rather than good ones.  Is this true?  And did they have any bad publicity to cause it as certainly every time they are in the news they look bad and may make some think twice about going for them. 

They're down, yeah. They've been plagued by infighting since 2010 when Nick Griffin failed to get elected and they lost every council seat in Barking, their strongest council, and then they were trashed, across the country, last year as well. They lost their one London Assembly Member (he became an independent) after a pretty slimy leadership election and Griffin announced he's going in 2013. They're apparently drowning in debt as well.

Catalyse that with a lot of their working class voters going back to Labour as they realise that the Tories were everything everyone thought they'd be. The far-right never really has much success when the Tories are in government, look at the NF in the 80s.

The far-right's gone back into its box, for now, their councillor base is getting slaughtered and it's doubtful they'll even win their EU seats again in 2014.

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What are the BNP polling numbers looking like?  I heard they are down which is surprising as usually extremist parties tend to do best during bad economic times rather than good ones.  Is this true?  And did they have any bad publicity to cause it as certainly every time they are in the news they look bad and may make some think twice about going for them. 

They're down, yeah. They've been plagued by infighting since 2010 when Nick Griffin failed to get elected and they lost every council seat in Barking, their strongest council, and then they were trashed, across the country, last year as well. They lost their one London Assembly Member (he became an independent) after a pretty slimy leadership election and Griffin announced he's going in 2013. They're apparently drowning in debt as well.

Catalyse that with a lot of their working class voters going back to Labour as they realise that the Tories were everything everyone thought they'd be. The far-right never really has much success when the Tories are in government, look at the NF in the 80s.

The far-right's gone back into its box, for now, their councillor base is getting slaughtered and it's doubtful they'll even win their EU seats again in 2014.

Good to see.  It seems though throughout much of continental Europe the far right is on the rise, although true they often go in cycles.  Unfortunately, I think it only a matter of time before the BNP makes a comeback.  In every European country there is at least 10% who are outright racist and another 30-50% who are somewhat prejudiced towards people different than them so it is not as though they don't have a large pool of potential voters.  Off course immigration is not the only issue people care about and they also want competent leaders too.

We have, of course, had some good polling for UKIP if you want to count them as far-right (which is extremely tenuous, of course).

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Just got back from voting, my first time. One of the loudspeaker vans flew past me before for Labour, we haven't had them round here in literally years.

The polling station was dead, saw one other voter just leaving as I went in and the poll workers looked beyond miserable.

Quite a few people are going out to vote in my sixth form though - buzz of the 'first time' I suppose.

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What are we predicting? I'm assuming Labour'll underperform, so i'm not willing to say any more than 400-500 gains. My gut tells me the Tories will lose more than the LibDems simply because they have further to fall on 2008, but the LibDems will have another dire night considering there's load've northern councils up again, so plenty of places they'll lose almost by default.

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What are we predicting? I'm assuming Labour'll underperform, so i'm not willing to say any more than 400-500 gains. My gut tells me the Tories will lose more than the LibDems simply because they have further to fall on 2008, but the LibDems will have another dire night considering there's load've northern councils up again, so plenty of places they'll lose almost by default.

I can't predict anything at this stage. 2011 was a surprise because not only did Labour underperform, but the Tories ended up making gains. This time round I have a feeling that the Lib Dems will not fall as hard as people would think. I think the Tories will have a rough night but I can take comfort that this far into Blair's premiership Labour lost nearly 600 councillors and won the GE by a landslide a year later.

Scotland is even more difficult to predict.

Conventional wisdom for Scotland tells me that Labour and the Tories will stay round and about the same level (a handful of loses) and most LibDem councillors will become SNP councillors. Not willing to give any figures, don't know Scottish politics well enough.

Wales, will of course, give Llafur an incredible night.