UK Local Elections, 4th May 2017

[afleitch]

I'm looking forward to a slew of Tory-Labour coalitions in Scotland where they can yell 'No more referendum' and then have nothing else to do for five years.

[afleitch]

Worth noting that the Scottish results were pretty much what I expected in an STV system. As in 2012, regardless of how well the SNP perform (2011 and 2015/16) either side of council elections, the elections are pretty much a more even match. The only downside is the bartering to form administrations. That's entirely political and might not reflect what the public actually want.

[afleitch]

Looking at Labour 'won' wards, in North Lanarkshire, Coatbridge stayed Labour and Airdrie remained SNP, which is how it always was. Something suggesting a big degree of local voting here. Labour also won the Shotts-Bathgate corridor and Bellshill but the SNP won Motherwell.

In South Lanarkshire, East Kilbride and Hamilton were SNP, but Blantyre and Larkhall and Lesmahagow etc Labour. Bothwell went Tory as did Avondale and Clydesdale

So there's a degree of 'sectarian' voting but extremely localised, and sometimes contrary.

[afleitch]

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/15270068.Orange_Order_elected_to_councils_as_Labour_and_Tory_members/

duh

[afleitch]

Scottish results.

My map is a little different from others as I don't treat independents like a bloc. They only 'win the ward' if one independent outpolls all other parties.

[afleitch]

The pattern of Labour won wards is pretty striking isn't it lol.

Isn't it

[afleitch]

It'd be interesting to see a comparison between that map and the map in the last set of local elections in which the Tories did comparably well.  I'm not sure when that would have been though: probably one of the last set of the two-tier council elections but the smaller wards and different voting systems would skew things

1982 regionals probably, in which they also took 25% of the vote. It was FPTP and not all wards were the same size, wards in Glasgow were 6 times larger than those in the Highlands

[afleitch]

The pattern of Labour won wards is pretty striking isn't it lol.

Isn't it

Also need a picture of a pithead, but...

Worth noting that council party loyalties in Monklands remained untouched. Which was a actually a surprise given the oft overheard murmurs that the 'SNP are for Catholics'