UK Local Elections 2022

[JimJamUK]

Context:

The 2018 local elections largely saw a repeat of trends seen in the 2017 general election. The polls had a small Conservative lead and the estimated Projected National Voting of the election was 35% apiece. As is standard, the Liberal Democrats, Green and independents did better than national polling would suggest (and this overperformance was of course most concentrated in places they actually campaigned in). Labour did well in London and other largely remain voting areas, while the Conservatives did well in more leave-orientated places. UKIP was almost entirely wiped out.

This year, the polls suggest Labour are doing about as well as they did nationally as in 2018. The Conservatives are polling 5-10% behind their 2018 polls, but i would expect a vote share loss on the lower end. The Liberal Democrats are polling marginally better. UKIP still had a small residual vote in 2018, the Brexit Reform Party are polling similar but seem to have even less organisation capability. The Greens were reduced to their core/name on a survey national support in 2018 and are polling double this year. They have also finally gotten their sh**t together in terms of Lib Dem style local campaigning the last few years so expect a load of newspaper articles proclaiming them a massive threat to the Tories when they win a few random villages in the middle of nowhere. Independents/minor parties did very well in 2019 off the back of the abysmal popular of our 2 major parties at the time. I would suggest this year may prove a good prospect for them as well (2021 was not, at least for those facing the Tories).

Scotland and Wales are harder to talk about given they were last up in May 2017 which was just before the big swing from the Conservatives to Labour (and the polls were clearly overestimating the gap even in early May). They also significantly overestimated the SNP. That said, the SNP seem poised to do much better this year while the Conservatives do quite a bit worse (though in seat numbers they may hold up better given under-nomination last time).

In Wales, there has been a substantial swing to Labour in national polling from a 5-10% Conservative lead to a 10-15% Labour lead. However, much of the national Conservative vote goes independent locally, theres a 5% Reform vote which won't be able to vote for said party, and if you focus in on the places where Labour and the Conservatives stood last time without too much vote for independents/smaller parties, it wasn't very different from how these wards would have voted at the 2017 general election. Therefore, I suspect the swing will be much more muted than it seems on paper. Plaid seem to be stagnating, and the Lib Dems continued collapse in their former heartlands may hurt them badly in seat numbers. The Greens are polling much better, but their Welsh branch doesn't seem very electorally capable so expect few gains.

[JimJamUK]

It will be an interesting set of elections; it's all of London's councils, Birmingham City Council & some of the 'big councils' in England are electing a third of their councillors. Some of these will be tough for Labour with Sunderland being the 'bright shiny object' for the lobby at the moment.

Oh God, the 'analysis' is going to be unbearable. For context, Sunderland was a relatively poor result for Labour in 2018 (in part due to the unpopularity of the local council), which along with a few other poor early results helped set the media narrative before it later turned out that Labour and the Conservatives were basically tied nationally as was the case in 2014. Labour then had an absolutely shambolic night in 2019 with losses to just about everyone, with the council leader going on the national news to say that people were voting Lib Dem to show their support for Brexit (??) rather than because of any local issues. Labour 'only' lost 9 seats in 2021 which meant they actually won a majority of seats up that time, but i've seen no evidence that the council is getting any more popular so Labour should be braced for further losses.

[JimJamUK]

Sunderland Labour had a good result in a local by-election recently, the first time that's happened for ages. I would assume a further loss of seats is likely, but not that many this time and they ought to keep their majority. But, yes, the electoral travails of that administration are purely local in character. Some of the scandals have been beyond parody.

Well, their vote share held firm while the Tories/UKIP collapsed and the Lib Dem’s surged to a distant 2nd. It’s a very good result given the past by-elections, and the ward voted UKIP in 2019 so is clearly a bit schizophrenic, but still not great given the national picture. And given the media deal in gains/losses, I don’t think an objectively better result than last year will do Labour much good on election night either.

[JimJamUK]

Labour should have a great night in London. Besides being ahead by more now, Boris' Tories are a worse fit than May's there and Starmer is of course a better fit than Corbyn.

Actually the polls have usually found a below average swing to Labour in London. Presumably a combination of London having more young people, ethnic minorities and remain voters, all groups that have seen relatively small swings to Labour post-2019 (before Partygate, these groups were often outright swinging Conservative!). This is balanced out by the fact Labour held up better in London in 2019 so the London swing shouldn’t be too out of kilter with the national swing.

[JimJamUK]

Until the 2021 seats come up again in 2025, I don't think Labour can realistically come back in the majority, and even then, it would have to involve some kind of reversal of Labour's fortunes with the white working-class.

This is an underrated point more generally. The 2016, 2018 and 2019 election results were all fairly even between Labour and the Conservatives. Conversely, 2021 was a very strong result for the Conservatives. This means that in places where for a few years it has been neck and neck between the 2 major parties, the Conservatives now have a significant advantage in seat numbers. Labour might be able to tip the balance if they have a good year both this year and 2023, but otherwise it will often be a waiting game for 2025 to roll around and deliver some gains (regardless of circumstance, its hard to see Labour noticeably underperforming their 2021 result in 2025).

[JimJamUK]

A major benefit of election by thirds is that councils can notice when their electors are getting pissed off about an issue. Whether this be a ward specific issue or general dissatisfaction with the council, they have the opportunity to do better rather than take massive beating immediately. Of course, this depends on the council leadership being willing to acknowledge fault and change things, which in the case of some councils has absolutely not happened and repeated punishment from the voters has rightly followed.

[JimJamUK]

Am I right in that Labours best results could be in Wales?

Seems to be a number of places they did very badly in 2017 and where they did well last year…

Hard to say. They actually did about as well vs the Conservatives in the disastrous 2017 locals as in the 2017 general election. This likely indicates that Welsh Labour are able to do much better at local elections, but could also indicate that a lot of swing voters were already backing them last time so there's not much room to grow (and in a lot of places where this pattern was evident in England in 2017, the 2021 results were not pretty, suggesting a lot of these voters are losable locally on a bad night). They've also left swathes of council seats uncontested, which will limit their ability to actually gain seats (the Tories have done well on this front, though it may not help them much this time). OTOH, they should be aiming to do better vs independents, in part helped by the Conservatives splitting the Not-Labour voter in many more wards this time, in part by national Labour just generally being less poisonous than last time.

[JimJamUK]

Yes but it isn't going to be the case there.

While the 2 constituencies covering the council area were relatively poor Conservative results in the 2019 GE (it part due to the Lib Dem targeting), ‘Conservative remainers’ are pretty much the most resilient group of Conservative voters post-2019, and before their recent polling troubles there were actually many returning to the Conservatives (particularly those who had switched to the Lib Dems). Even now, YouGov polling has found Johnson’s approval rating among remainers is down by only about 5% since the 2019 election, while it’s down 20% among leavers.

Beyond the depolarisation around Brexit and Corbyn’s specific ability to alienate cultural conservatives, it’s also hard to imagine Kensington and Chelsea being the area where the Conservatives current woes around Partygate (‘one rule for them’) and the cost of living crisis are going to disproportionately hurt them.

[JimJamUK]

While the 2 constituencies covering the council area were relatively poor Conservative results in the 2019 GE (it part due to the Lib Dem targeting), ‘Conservative remainers’ are pretty much the most resilient group of Conservative voters post-2019, and before their recent polling troubles there were actually many returning to the Conservatives (particularly those who had switched to the Lib Dems). Even now, YouGov polling has found Johnson’s approval rating among remainers is down by only about 5% since the 2019 election, while it’s down 20% among leavers.

Beyond the depolarisation around Brexit and Corbyn’s specific ability to alienate cultural conservatives, it’s also hard to imagine Kensington and Chelsea being the area where the Conservatives current woes around Partygate (‘one rule for them’) and the cost of living crisis are going to disproportionately hurt them.

Isn't there a signficant amount of deprivation in Kensington and Chelsea, where both Partygate and Cost of Living could help boost turnout among labour voters ?

There is significant poverty in North Kensington. However, it is very much a minority of the council area so those issues would be expected to have less of an impact here, and poverty is very concentrated in a few wards that are already safe Labour.

[JimJamUK]

Britainelects estimates. FTR, I listened into his shop-talk two days ago, and I think they are low-balling Labour. Not for any fault, but because the main benchmark in many places was last years locals which was repeatedly said by him to basically be viewed as a repeat of the 2019 GE. If the margins reverse, which polls say they have, one would expect a good chunk of the northern areas that went blue to flip back red. Not because of a reversion, but more a situation where a new marginal swings because it's a marginal. So even though Labour are in a strong position in many of these council's selection of seats that are up, cause they were last contested in 2018, there should still be room for some growth alongside those holds.

Completely agree. To think of it another way, Labour currently has a ~6% lead over the Conservatives compared to a draw in 2018, a ~10% Conservative lead in 2017/2021, and a 12% Conservative lead in the 2019 general election. Regardless of which baseline you look from Labour are getting a decent to large swing to them and it has to be happening somewhere. Polling indicates Labour are getting their biggest swing among older voters/Leavers, and its not clear how many more votes Labour can get in their safe inner city areas (particularly with the generic Green vote up and London polling indicating, at best, an average swing). Therefore, Labour should be getting a good swing in the English and Welsh marginals, and if they're not then somethings gone wrong for them.

[JimJamUK]

So far Labour's good perfomance seems to be disguised by the fact that most councils that have declares are places where they performed reasonably well pre-2019 but totally collapsed in 2019 so most swings seem pretty minute.

A few of the early councils (Sunderland, Nuneaton + Bedworth, some provincial towns etc) were already poor results for Labour in 2018 (unpopular councils and genuinely large changes in national political allegiance) and obviously poor at the 2019 general election so their relatively poor result this year was to be expected. As in 2018 we are waiting to see how they do in more 'normal' territory.

[JimJamUK]

2018 was only a high benchmark in the sense that drawing level with the Tories was the best Labour have done in years. Once you allow for the disproportionate demographic swing since the 2019 general election and the fact Labour seem to actually have a small lead over the Tories, then they shouldn't really be seeing much of a swing to the Tories even in the 'Red Wall'. In fact this is mostly the case. There are some obvious outliers (as there were in 2018) but most of the heavily Leave seats are not seeing massive swings to the Conservative but often rather modest ones. This is counter-balanced by a decent swing to Labour in more Remain territory (again, broadly speaking).

[JimJamUK]

Comparisons with 2021 are really not positive for them at all.

Yeah, the swings to Labour since 2021 are very encouraging for them, especially in some of the most pro-Brexit areas (Dudley, Nuneaton + Bedworth, Hartlepool etc). Individual cases can be written off based on council popularity etc, but there does seem to be a general picture of Labour getting the biggest swings in some of the places that saw the biggest swings to the Conservatives in 2021. Swing voters gonna swing...

[JimJamUK]

Labour only down one seat on 2018 in Cannock Chase district. If you're aware what things looked like there last year you'll see why this is worth noting...

A similar (though probably less chaotic) story in many similar areas.

[JimJamUK]

Wrexham swings hard against the Tories and the Indies, to the benefit of Labour and PC.

An area with interesting local politics and a complete Labour implosion in 2017.

[JimJamUK]

a bit of a sidenote: Has any British MP ever proposed abolishing local goverments all-togther and running things Centrally ?

Not that I’m aware. It wouldn’t be a popular idea and they’re already centralising local government anyways (the cuts in local government funding and requirement to fund certain services mean that most local councils have de facto little to no power, and the push for unitarisation means that local government is not very, well, local).

[JimJamUK]

Newcastle Under Lyme was apparently a council Labour were wanting (and realistically could) win according to social media. I suspect this would be news to anybody who noticed the complete wipeout they received in the 2021 county council elections there.

[JimJamUK]

Rahman's protection racket party has also won a majority on Tower Hamlets council.

I’m not usually one for arguing that it’s good that parties lose support with certain groups (the Conservatives current ‘of course the London elites hate us which just goes to show how great we are’ message won’t be going them any good), but if many Tower Hamlets local elections voters could only have been kept by Labour going full pandering then I’m not sure it reflects badly on Labour.

[JimJamUK]

What happend in Tower Hamlet ? the borough seems to be only around 30 percent Bengali but Aspire seems to have won a majority.

Aspire only needed 37% of the vote to get a majority of seats. The Bengali population may only be about 1/3 of the borough, but it has very high turnout in the right circumstances (Tower Hamlets had the highlight turnout in the 2014 mayoral election concurrent EU elections in London, when on paper it should have had one of the lowest). Rahman may also have some sympathy in other Muslim communities (but I certainly can’t see him getting any of the white vote, especially in Canary Wharf).

[JimJamUK]

Just looking at the individual Welsh council results and, uh, some Labour councils seem more popular than others (and given they were last up in 2017 and not 2018, holding or even losing seats in this environment is pretty remarkable).

[JimJamUK]

I would be cautious about predicting big Lib Dem gains at the next election. They have done well in local elections before and then fell flat on their faces at the general election soon after. Their current big gains are in the context of polling below their 2019 general election performance (and for most of this Parliament they were polling quite a bit lower), which doesn’t suggest much success will be found outside of places where they have established themselves as the clear and credible non-Conservative challenger and targeted their resources fairly narrowly.

[JimJamUK]

I guess I'm just curious why the LibDems can do so well in SW London but they are dead as a doornail in NW and SE corners of London which are very blue. What sorts of people decide to live in the SE rather than the SW?

The outer SE London is ‘working class done good’ territory. Labour had a substantial vote there until about the 1960s, but the area has largely trended Conservative for many decades now. It tends to be very pro-Brexit, had a very good UKIP vote, and in the 2000s had many Labour-BNP swing voters on the peripheral council estates. It’s mostly very white and to some extent a bit ‘white flighty’.

While the likes of Richmond can be viewed as an extension of wealthy and educated inner west London, SE London is more suburban/exurban with lots of people who culturally identify with Kent. The Lib Dem’s did have some strength in the past in Orpington and currently have a few councillors in Bromley, but it’s Labour who come 2nd in general elections. There’s been some demographic change on the edges eg; in Penge, Bromley, Thamesmead, but SE London is largely the area of London that will be voting Conservative to the last.

[JimJamUK]

The outer SE London is ‘working class done good’ territory.

Though, and for a long time now, often in a 'well I seem myself as such because my (sometimes 'great-' now) grandfather was born in Rotherhithe' manner.

Yes, and contrary to the logic underpinning the original ‘Red Wall’ thesis, having a great grandad who had an industrial job doesn’t make you infinitely more likely to vote Labour.

[JimJamUK]

The mystery of Labour's weirdly bad performance in and around Hyde has been solved...


Nine times out of ten it's a planning issue, isn't it?

I’ve just typed her name into Google and not only does it have results (not a given for local councillors), it actually gives ‘bulldozer’ as the second suggestion (followed by ‘Godley Green’). So yeah.