English Local Elections 2006

[Peter]

Oxford

I'll mostly just talk about my present home in this thread I expect:

Oxford City Council is elected by halves and has elections in even years with councillors serving a four year term. For a blank outline with ward names, click here. For previous election results back to 2002 see the City Council website, though you will have to put up with PDFs.

Present composition of Council (number of Councillors up in 2006):

Labour - 21 (14)
Lib Dem - 17 (7)
Green - 7 (3)
IWCA - 3 (0) [Independent Working Class Association - firery anti-war lot]

Obviously Labour are playing defensive after having their asses handed to them on a plate. (If you don't believe, look at the super-kinky pics).

The distribution of the incumbents facing re-election is:



The results from the 2004 elections on identical wards is:



Click either image to enlarge.

In addition to holding all their seats, Labour would have to win a further 4 to take full majority control of the council. This won't happen.

In addition to holding all their seats, the Lib Dems would have to win a further 8 seats to take majority control of the council. This won't happen.

We will either be stuck with a minority council (LD or Lab), or maybe finally the LDs will make up with the Greens and form a coalition to control the council. Regardless, Oxford is an NOC hold for the BBC.

The eagle-eyed among you will have noticed the lack of blue - we have no Tory councillors. Their best chance will be either in Headington Hill and Northway (presently Labour, were only 17 votes behind in 2004) or Wolvercote (presently Lib Dem, were 159 votes or 7.4% behind in 2004).

The situation with the two IWCA (purple) wards in the SE of the city is a bit more complicated than it first appears. Whilst they were both won by the IWCA in 2004, subsequently both had by-elections for the 2002 seats which were both held by Labour quite comfortably, therefore I do not expect them to mount a serious challenge to any of the Labour wards this time. In essence, their 2004 performance was an Iraq backlash coupled with the general unpopularity of the Labour administration.

I'll post more analysis over the weekend. I will do requests for custom maps for 2004 also (e.g. Labour share across the city)

[Peter]

An interesting little opus that I discovered whilst looking over the list of candidates is that the Tories are not contesting all the seats.

The Tories had the following voting patterns last time:


Here is where they are running candidates:


(Click either to enlarge)

The council estate wards in East Oxford, I can totally understand - they hadn't performed well there in the past, and they had no reason to believe this was going to change any time soon. Same with the central wards of St Marys and Iffley Fields which are dominated by students and city workers.

What does jump off the page at me is Marston in the north of the City - they polled a respectable 20% in 2004 and under a more appealing leader such as Cameron, they could probably have seen some improvement there. This will undoubtedly significantly effect the race in Marston which is presently a Lib-Lab margainal with the 2002 incumbent being a Labour councillor. The Tory vote up there is likely to be liberal and therefore I would expect them to go Lib Dem, potentially swinging the seat.

[Peter]

Less than a week to go: I am still yet to receive a leaflet from the Tories or Labour; My Lib Dem and Green leaflets are here. In other news, my JCR President has gotten me a ticket to go to the Oxford count.

The general picture is that the Lib Dems will pick up some ground from Labour, though Labour won't do anywhere near as badly as in 2004 which was nigh on apocalyptic. The Greens and Lib Dems continue to compete heavily over the student vote, but the Greens have somewhat shot themselves in the foot - The Oxford Animal Lab that is presently being built is supported by the Lib Dems, but vehemently opposed by the Greens. Polling of students indicates 80% support for the Lab. Greens should consolidate their gains over Labour from 04.

There is also a concurrent by-election for the 2004 seat in my ward, St Clements, which the Greens should hold.

All in all, the changes are likely to be (from 2002):
Headington Hill and Northway - Con gain from Lab
Quarry and Risinghurst - Lib Dem gain from Lab
Marston - Lib Dem gain from Lab (on account of the Tories not running)
Carfax - Lib Dem gain from Green (Greens had only held it in the past because of Mike Woodin)
Iffley Fields - Green gain from Lab

Yielding an 2006 map along these lines:



Labour - 10
Lib Dem - 10
Green - 3 (+1 by-election)
Tory - 1

This gives a total Council of:
Lib Dem - 20
Labour - 17
Green - 7
IWCA - 3
Conservative - 1

24 is needed for overall control, so we may well be stuck with Lib Dem minority.

[Peter]

This one amused me, though I would like to firstly point out that I do not know definitively that this is true, though I have been told by a usually reliable source.

The Oxford Labour Party has paired a number of the wards, that is to say it takes all activists out of hopeless wards in the hope of holding various marginal wards. Anyway, Holywell (city centre, student dominated) and Barton & Sandhills (NE Oxford) have been paired. One particular son (studying at Oxford) of a certain high ranking Labour MP is from Holywell and was thusly sent out to Barton.

Supposedly, he was out there a little longer than he expected and nature called. Apparently he used somebody's garden. I doubt the press will report it because its mostly just rumour, and also the reason I'm omitting the name. If you can't guess it, PM me.

In other news, one of the Tory candidates has allegedly committed gross electoral fraud (punishable by up to a year in the clink). I actually think I know the nominee who wished to remain anonymous.

The story has other repurcussions because the Tory is running in Holywell, a highly marginal Green - Lib Dem ward. I have discussed this matter with somebody in the Lib Dems who has stated that should the Tory candidate get more than the margin of victory, then it'll end up in electoral court.

[Peter]

My spies have informed me that the Lib Dems have done very well in a number of the postal vote counts in Oxford, and are even nominally leading in wards where they usually do crap.

I'll predict in the morning.

[Peter]

The above is the change of wards. Ignore the key for the minute (I'll wait until morning before doing share maps), but the darker colours indicate pickups. (See this for previous incumbents).

There were some real suprises - the Cowley swap over surprised everyone in the hall (Cowley went from Lab to LD whilst Cowley Marsh went LD to Lab). Headington Hill and Northway was a nail-bitter and in the end the LDs came through the middle in our one three-way ward.

IWCA did quite well in the estates again (contrary to my expectations) picking up Northfield Brook, though were not able to pickup Blackbird Leys.

One of the Lib Dems I was talking to described the Council as the Israeli Knesset since nobody can ever get overall control. I would have to agree.

[Peter]

If you're interested:

Majority map


Winners share map


I got a number of the margainal wards wrong (like everybody else at the count, nobody predicted the Cowley swap, so I think I can be excused for that). I did at least predict the holding of Holywell by the Libs and Lye Valley and Jericho & Osney by Labour correctly.

Got Barton and Quarry the wrong way round. Didn't see the Lib Dems storming from third to first in Headington Hill and didn't account for the wild card factor of some random Indie in Marston. I certainly didn't see the IWCA coming either.

The Lib Dems were kicking themselves - they fought very hard on Holywell, then won it by a few hundred, to discover that Carfax next door was held by the Greens by 23 votes, a ward they could have spent more time on.

[Peter]

though I'm surprised Crawley had been Labour since 1971

The Crawley of today is a lot different from the Crawley of the late 80s and early 90s. When the Tories were doing genuinely well in local elections (i.e. in that time frame), Crawley was much more working class and didn't have the significant pockets of middle class voters that have since built up in areas like Pound Hill. By the time things started looking demographically favourable for the Tories in the mid 90s, they were doing so awfully in local elections, they didn't stand a chance.

This is juxtaposed against the Parliamentary constituency of Crawley, which from 1983 to 1997 included several rural villages (some of which elect Tory councillors without contests), and stretched across to East Grinstead. It was these voters that made it a regular fixture for Conservatives in general elections. Come the 1997 boundary changes, these wards were cut to just leave the Crawley Borough, making it a sure gain for Labour in 1997 even though parts of the town had become more favourable for the Tories.

A couple of other notes:

Mole Valley District Council (the home of my parents) has for the first time gone Tory. To the casual observer this is something of a surprise - Mole Valley has been consistently cast iron Tory in general elections. As ever, it is the curse of the Residents Associations - they controlled the majority of the North of the District through the 1980s, indeed, they still have a few Councillors up in Ashtead even though the group has formally disbanded.

As we drew into the 1990s, the Lib Dems have picked up support in and around Dorking, so the council remained constantly hung. Only now have the Tories broken through enough to take overall control.

[Peter]

(click image to enlarge)

Those are the party share breakdowns across the city. Most interesting is how the Green share is just about the inverse of the Labour share.

[Peter]

Good to see the Tories not even running candidates everywhere. What about IWCA.

They screwed the nomination forms up it appears, though the only place this mattered was Marston (the most Northerly of their uncontested wards) because in the rest of the wards they struggle to break 10% of the PV.

The IWCA ran in only 4 wards, so I didn't bother. If you are interested in the %s, see Wikipedia's article

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Nobody to my knowledge. I'm using the abverb "just" as opposed to the adjective.

[Peter]

Only place in Surrey that wasn't a bluewash was Woking, which is actually creeping back towards Lib Dem overall control. Labour lost all 5 of their councillors up for re-election in Surrey. Only two more years and a complete wipeout might be witnessed.

[Peter]

15 district councillors remain, out of nearly 500.