UK local elections, May 2018

[Oryxslayer]

Anything in from London yet? I suspect these might like the 2017 locals, where labor gets pummeled in rurals/smalltown and does better in the urban areas. Of course with polling as it is, better probably means gains in the city.

Also looks like 2017 in the way that looks like there is a near universal UKIP -> Con.

SF holds the by-election.

[Oryxslayer]

Lab finally up overall on the night - though every big party is. More rumors buzzing around about how Lodon is more divided rather then a Labslide,

West midlands overall just flashed on BBC:

Lab -8
Con +26
Lib dem 0
GReen +1
UKIP/other - 19

[Oryxslayer]

Labour look on track to take control of Plymouth. Picked off 2 Conservative seats there.

Speak of the devil, confirmed now. First Lab gain. Apparently this is a rather unique situation due to the lack of direct government military funding (lack of missiles on ships for example) to an area that is very military invested.

[Oryxslayer]

Indications from wards in so far are that Labour will fall short in Wandsworth - given the GE results there and the fact that the special factors that led to its very distinctive local results in the 90s no longer apply, this would be a rather poor result.

Though - critically - it is rather tight and it's not impossible that things might fall the right way.

Indications from wards in so far are that Labour will fall short in Wandsworth - given the GE results there and the fact that the special factors that led to its very distinctive local results in the 90s no longer apply, this would be a rather poor result.

Though - critically - it is rather tight and it's not impossible that things might fall the right way.

As BBC just said, and I retweeted, the results appear very very correlated to 2016 and not 2017. lab and Lib are wiping out the Tories in London, I believe someone said Con will probably end up with 3ish councils in the city. Outside London, Tories are mainly making gains at expense of UKIP and LAB, with the exceptions of a few areas like Plymouth.

[Oryxslayer]

Labor goes 4 seats backwards in Hillingdon.

[Oryxslayer]

If you look only at results outside of London, it looks like a strong night for the Tories. If you look only at results in London, it looks like a disaster for the Tories. Inverse for Labour, of course.

I don't see how that's true at all? The results in London are much better for the Tories than even more sensible briefings suggested - o/c they were defending poor results in much of the city from 2014.

The Tories have lost a bunch of ground in London overall but generally gained ground outside of London. Measuring relative to "expectations" is a futile task, but measuring next to prior results is actually helpful.

Yes, but nobody can deny that Labour have done a remarkably poor job of managing expectations. What looks like a average night or more or less a wash now looks like Lab loss. Wandsworth would have flipped easily under the expectations Labor were setting, but they couldn't capture that council.