UK local elections, 2 May 2019

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Ah, local elections in England. Possibly the worst electoral system that anybody has come up with in the history of the world

Certainly one of the most chaotic!

Will there be any results declared tonight, or is everyone reporting tomorrow?

Estimated declaration times (UK time of course)

Do they do exit polls like in the general election?

No

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Could someone familiar with Greater Manchester explain why Trafford is trending Labour? At this rate, Graham Brady's seat could be marginal in a decade or so...

Progressive young professionals moving into the borough. The south side is pretty affluent suburban Tory base, the north is historically industrial working class that saw decline until recently and what’s left of this group is being supplemented by an influx of metropolitans from Manchester as the city grows. I assume house prices/green belt are an issue, notable as well there was much talk at the count about austerity which wasn’t really much of a feature elsewhere, more so than from many much poorer parts of the country.

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Does this have any effect on The European elections? Could it give the Lib Dems a boost going into them?

Not to be churlish, of course they’ll be happy with this result, but I would not expect the EP elections to look anything like this. Remember the voting patterns are skewed by the LDs being the only viable non-Conservative/Labour candidate in many seats, if there were any others at all. This is not the case in an EP election under a sort-of proportional voting system.

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As Gary J alluded to, the structure of English local government has changed substantially over the past few decades, so an apples to apples comparison of a local election from that long ago with today is very limited in how much it can reveal. There were no municipal mayoralties back in 1991, no unitary authorities, and something like twice as many councils/counsillors, and a much less fractured party system.

I would agree with the argument that the Labour Party isn't having a very good night, though that's has little to do with the effectiveness or appeal of the Tories.

Nevertheless, if you did want to make direct comparisons with the past, keep this in mind: the Tories have not lost this many local councils or gotten this low a share of the vote since 1995, which was the prelude to their 1997 catastrophic loss to Labour. Concurrently, the Lib Dems have not had as impressive a night since 1987, when they were still the SDP-Liberal Alliance Party. I would also note that the Tories haven't won a single one of the 'big ticket' mayoral contests.

There's no way around it: this is a bad, bad, bad day for the Tories.  

In 1995 Cons were on 25% NEV and Tony Blair’s Labour was on 47%, so they were losing all these seats to Labour, that’s why there was a landslide 2 years later. Now it’s looking like Con 29% to Corbyn’s Labour on 28%. That’s not even a 1 on the Richter scale, let alone indicative of Labour sweeping to power. So yes the Tories aren’t doing great, but that doesn’t mean much if Labour are going backwards too.

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So the Tories lost 1300 seats and Labour lost 80, but this is being spun as equally bad for both parties? I get that expectations matter, but this is ridiculous.

Because the starting point is not equal; sort of like your mid-terms when, say, most seats up for election to the Senate are your own party's.

These elections were mostly in the Tory shires that were won at a high point in the electoral cycle, Cameron winning a majority at a General Election.  So these seats disproportionately contain the low hanging fruit.  Even on a good day the Conservatives would have been down a couple of hundred seats.

It's the opposite case for Labour.  Milliband's share was poor in 2015, barely better than Gordon Brown's. If Labour want to win an election it means pushing out of their bases in London and Wales. So not even being able to take the low hanging fruit back while losing in northern marginals is just as bad a sign for them.