UK local elections, 2 May 2019

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It seems that all things equal when all the counting is done the the number of Councillors CON will have won would be roughly the same as the number of Councillors the LAB and LIB put together.  Quiet and accomplishment in its 9th year in power and after a catastrophic last few months.  I guess UKIP not running in a bunch of seats where they did run in 2015 must have helped.  

Yeah, that's not how this works.

The councils up for election yesterday are only a portion of the local governments in the UK. London, Scotland, Wales, and large swaths of mostly metropolitan England aren't voting today. Those places that are voting are disproportionately Tory leaning, i.e. rural, older, whiter, etc.

The situation is analogous to having an entire class of US Senate seats consist of 75% heavily GOP states (Oklahoma, Kansas, Idaho, etc.). The Tories only managing to win half of the races in the most favourable terrain they could hope for is, in reality, a dismal showing.

[cp]

It seems that all things equal when all the counting is done the the number of Councillors CON will have won would be roughly the same as the number of Councillors the LAB and LIB put together.  Quiet and accomplishment in its 9th year in power and after a catastrophic last few months.  I guess UKIP not running in a bunch of seats where they did run in 2015 must have helped.  

Yeah, that's not how this works.

The councils up for election yesterday are only a portion of the local governments in the UK. London, Scotland, Wales, and large swaths of mostly metropolitan England aren't voting today. Those places that are voting are disproportionately Tory leaning, i.e. rural, older, whiter, etc.

The situation is analogous to having an entire class of US Senate seats consist of 75% heavily GOP states (Oklahoma, Kansas, Idaho, etc.). The Tories only managing to win half of the races in the most favourable terrain they could hope for is, in reality, a dismal showing.

I see.  If these elections are on a 4 year cycle would not a better apples-to-apples comparison be 1991 when there was a long tenured CON government

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_United_Kingdom_local_elections

There the LAB were clearly head of CON

So I would still argue these results look very good in 2019 for the CON in historical perspective  

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/councillors, 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.  

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I think that's a very astute take. I'd add to that, a lot of the 'Independent' gains is coming in the form of Residents Associations or other parties. For those not familiar, these sorts of things are quite common, especially in nearly-monolithic-Tory parts of the country. They're not ideological, though if you tried to pin down the individual members they'd probably all fit comfortably into the Tory party (there are a few analogues on the Labour side up north, too, whose members are basically erstwhile Labourites).

Putting my political history hat on, elections where Lib Dems, RA parties, and the Greens do well tend to come when a Tory coalition is coming to pieces, and it tends to culminate in a turfing of the Tories from Westminster government in fairly short order.

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There's some truth to that, though the 2017 general election suggests there's actually an inverse relationship to Tory confidence and Corbyn performance, rather than a consistent pattern of Corbyn underperformance.

Much as I'm keen on Corbyn getting into office, I can't help but think these locals are a sign that he'll never achieve more than a slim majority. He's just too much of a turn off to too many people, far more so than Labour's/Corbyn's Brexit policy.

That said, personally unpopular leaders have managed to win majorities before (Harper 2011, Trump 2016, May 2017 barely)

[cp]

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.

The general angle seems to be that they were bad for both but worse for the former, but anyway:

1. Most of the Labour seats up for election were in 'Metropolitan Boroughs' or larger urban unitary authorities. In both cases the wards are rather large and in the case of the former (some of the latter as well) they elect by thirds: so each ward has three councillors and one seat in the ward comes up for election each active year of the electoral cycle.

2. Conversely, almost all of the Conservative seats up for re-election were in Districts. Most of these elect all of their councillors in one go and in all cases the wards are much, much smaller. Typically more seats will be up for re-election in a small district than in a substantial urban council such as Manchester.

3. These seats were last contested on the same day as the 2015 General Election. This had the effect of imposing high turnout patterns (which are fairly uniform and benefit mostly major parties) onto what is usually (and was this time) a low turnout set of elections. In particular it meant that the Conservative were defending a much higher baseline in the Districts than would normally have been the case.

4. The usual rule is that government parties lose seats at midterm polls (well we've definitely seen that), and that the principle opposition party takes the lions share of these. Even if they don't manage that, they'll usually manage decent gains, even if national polling isn't fantastic.


5. And, ultimately, what matters more than the aggregate total of seats (a stupid media obsession, frankly) is control of local authorities. This does not present a pretty picture for either major party.

This has been almost completely overlooked in the coverage (and this thread). Practically speaking, with fewer Tories in local office there are fewer credible candidates for higher office, lesser resources to contest campaigns or organize grassroots campaigns for/against various measures, and a much higher hill to climb for recruitment the next time around.

The quickest immediate effect will be on public services. Tories, very generally, tend to favour policies that cater to middle and upper class concerns: lowering property taxes, spending on arts/festivals/prettification campaigns, resisting public expenditures - especially on housing - and kowtowing to developers and/or landed interests when they approve of a development. Lib Dems are less deferential to monied and vested interests, though not much more keen on raising taxes. That said, they know they need to work for reelection so they'll push for lots of spending on schools, libraries, roads, parks, etc, and probably get it with Labour support.