2023 UK Local Elections

[afleitch]

For our international posters, it’s worth mentioning that voter ID is being rolled out across England for the first time this election. A non-negligible share of voters don’t appear to know this and/or will not bring an eligible form of ID to the polling station, so expect a bit of a car crash on election day followed by harsh criticism afterwards from some quarters. The partisan impact is unclear, Labour leaning working class voters are less likely to have ID, but so are very Conservative leaning pensioners, so who knows. If a significant number of in-person voters are disenfranchised, then the Conservative leaning and already relatively high turnout postal voters could make an important difference on the margins.

Even if it makes little difference to the results if the 'bloodbath' fails to materialise for other reasons, such as recent poll tightening, then it's easy fodder for opposition parties to attack the Tories over the ID requirement.

[afleitch]

What happened in slough?

It went bankrupt and had a massive council tax rise.

Regardless of the national picture, very local results like these still happen.

[afleitch]

Greens Largest Party in Folkstone & Hythe. Lab and them make big gains of the Tories, and have the combined majority. .

But the wokerati...

[afleitch]

I'm also confused by the national forecasts; yes the Labour lead would for them ideally be bigger but all the evidence (by-elections, mayoral elections etc) show that the very large Liberal Democrat vote is prepared to vote tactically for Labour & vice versa.

An effective tactical voting game in England and a modest revival of seats in Scotland could mean they don't need the previously expected huge lead over the Conservatives.

This is a very good effort post on the matter. Well worth a read.

https://beyondthetopline.substack.com/p/forget-the-party-spin-what-does-history

Basically, Labour always do worse at locals. When they are in power at Westminster, even worse still. You can't compare an x Tory lead under a Labour government to an x Labour lead under a Tory one.

The projected lead is in line with a 15pt lead in the polls. Labour have performed exactly where they should have.

[afleitch]

The big take-away, to paraphrase Sir John Curtice, is that the electorate is prepared to pick up any stick to beat the Tories with. The Lib Dems are showing that they are a powerful force at campaigning locally with and rising with the tide. There's an electorate willing to vote tactically again.