English local elections, May 2014

[Cassius]

Not sure if someone's already posted this, but apparently the BNP have managed to hang onto one of their seats, in Pendle. Also, this is just an idle question, but will UKIP electing more councillors (if we add today's gains to their previous total it comes to about 380 I think) enable them to run a better 'ground game' in future elections?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

It depends on whether the councillors are any good or not. If they are, then, yes. Obviously. If they're useless and lazy, then it's worse - in terms of ground game issues - than having no seats at all.

[EPG]

In the long term - like the Alliance/Lib Dems in the 80s and early 90s - it's hard to see how they can take many seats in areas where they don't have councillors.

[YL]

Time for some Sheffield maps.

Winning party, shaded by majority:


Labour share:


Lib Dem share:


UKIP share:


Green share:


Conservative share:

[All Along The Watchtower]

Congratulations to UKIP supporters, I guess?

....ugh.

[Silent Hunter]

After taking nearly twelve hours, Havering remains NOC.

Tories 22, Residents 19, UKIP 7, Independent Residents Group 6 and... Labour 1. Labour lost 4 seats and the Lib Dems their sole one remaining.

[jaichind]

Not sure if someone's already posted this, but apparently the BNP have managed to hang onto one of their seats, in Pendle. Also, this is just an idle question, but will UKIP electing more councillors (if we add today's gains to their previous total it comes to about 380 I think) enable them to run a better 'ground game' in future elections?

I would have to imagine this this year and last year's victories for UKIP in local elections is giving them a good farm team for Westminster elections, perhaps this will not have much of an impact in 2015 but if they can keep this up then I would have to think this will make a difference in elections beyond 2015.

[Silent Hunter]

Looks like some serious problems at the Tower Hamlets count.

[You kip if you want to...]

UKIP have done well, but not sensationally, despite what the media's reporting.

They're down 5% on last year and still getting too many second places and not enough firsts. They've made zero progress in London and the large cities and they've made no progress in targets like Eastleigh.

They've basically just done well at hoovering up BNP voters, old LibDem protest votes, Labour voters who used to vote Lib at locals and a decent handful of Tories.

[jaichind]

I have some questions on how UK local elections work as I am still not clear about some items

1) Why is the vote count so slow for local elections relative to Westminster elections?  It has been more than 24 hours and it still seems to be going on with only 150 out of 161 councils done.  Is it because some councils have rules saying that counts cannot be done until the Sunday when the Euro elections results are counted?  If not why is this so slow.  Only place I know of that is slower than this is my home county of Westchester of NY state.  But vote counting in Westchester has to be the most incompetent in the whole world.

2) When I read the BBC indicating the vote share is Labour 31 Conservatives 29 UKIP 17 and LD 13, is this just the absolute aggregation of the votes across the places that voted yesterday? Or does it take into account the PVI (for the lack of a better word) of places that voted and tried to normalize into what the implied national vote share would be.  I hope for the latter but suspect the former.  In 2013 it seems to be  Labour 29 Conservatives 25 UKIP 23 and LD 14, which makes sense only if one takes into account that the places that voted are in the South and and non-urban areas that are friendly to UKIP.  These numbers tell me that these BBC numbers are not normalized which means I am not sure what to make of them and not sure what inferences I can draw from these numbers.

[jaichind]

Seems to be that UKIP did very well as the voting yesterday much more urban focused than the places that voted in 2013 local elections.  Looking at the profile of what I would imagine would be the typical UKIP voter tells me that these results are much more impressive than in 2013 once we take into account that 2013 local elections are most in rural areas and yesterday's vote are much more urban focused and less friendly to UKIP.

[You kip if you want to...]

I have some questions on how UK local elections work as I am still not clear about some items

1) Why is the vote count so slow for local elections relative to Westminster elections?  It has been more than 24 hours and it still seems to be going on with only 150 out of 161 councils done.  Is it because some councils have rules saying that counts cannot be done until the Sunday when the Euro elections results are counted?  If not why is this so slow.  Only place I know of that is slower than this is my home county of Westchester of NY state.  But vote counting in Westchester has to be the most incompetent in the whole world.

2) When I read the BBC indicating the vote share is Labour 31 Conservatives 29 UKIP 17 and LD 13, is this just the absolute aggregation of the votes across the places that voted yesterday? Or does it take into account the PVI (for the lack of a better word) of places that voted and tried to normalize into what the implied national vote share would be.  I hope for the latter but suspect the former.  In 2013 it seems to be  Labour 29 Conservatives 25 UKIP 23 and LD 14, which makes sense only if one takes into account that the places that voted are in the South and and non-urban areas that are friendly to UKIP.  These numbers tell me that these BBC numbers are not normalized which means I am not sure what to make of them and not sure what inferences I can draw from these numbers.

1. Most councils count the following day because it's cheaper than counting through the night.

2. It's a projected national share, so they take the results of a selection of 'key wards' and try and extrapolate it across the country.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

After taking nearly twelve hours, Havering remains NOC.

Tories 22, Residents 19, UKIP 7, Independent Residents Group 6 and... Labour 1. Labour lost 4 seats and the Lib Dems their sole one remaining.

Wow what crazy schism resulted in the Residents splitting in two?

So it seems Labour's "cost of living crisis" is a great message for Londoners and the big metropolitan cities (of all income bands); less so for working-class provincial towns with other issues. Is that fair to say?


Barnet Tories hang on (just, with a delayed election in a safe Lab ward).

Amusingly everyone that defected from Labour in Barking (to UKIP and TUSC mostly) were wiped out.

[You kip if you want to...]

I'm a bit annoyed by the media coverage. No mention of the fact that UKIP have been rejected completely in Birmingham, Liverpool, Leeds, Manchester, etc...

It just seems like they don't want to admit that their UKIP narrative started out well last night, but has been looking quite floored as the count has progressed. UKIP should really have done better on councils like Manchester, Knowsley and Barking where there is literally no opposition (and a lot of WWC).

Ed and Labour may not be connecting across the country, but they're certainly connecting (and then some!) in some areas where they lost out locally 2000-2010.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

So it seems Labour's "cost of living crisis" is a great message for Londoners and the big metropolitan cities (of all income bands); less so for working-class provincial towns with other issues. Is that fair to say?

Probably not; it isn't as though the idea that Labour had a 'message' in this campaign was even apparent outside London. Or even a campaign, come to think of it. The European Elections being on the same day will also have had much less of a skewing effect in London (at least not in the same direction elsewhere) for certain very obvious reasons.

In general people need to remember that local elections aren't just low turnout elections; they're low turnout elections with a very fluid electorate. It isn't a case of the same people voting every year, not even in places that elect by thirds.

[MaxQue]

After taking nearly twelve hours, Havering remains NOC.

Tories 22, Residents 19, UKIP 7, Independent Residents Group 6 and... Labour 1. Labour lost 4 seats and the Lib Dems their sole one remaining.

Wow what crazy schism resulted in the Residents splitting in two?

So it seems Labour's "cost of living crisis" is a great message for Londoners and the big metropolitan cities (of all income bands); less so for working-class provincial towns with other issues. Is that fair to say?


Barnet Tories hang on (just, with a delayed election in a safe Lab ward).

Amusingly everyone that defected from Labour in Barking (to UKIP and TUSC mostly) were wiped out.

Not TUSC, but SLP, the party of Arthur Scargill.

[Supersonic]

The sole Liberal Democrat in Camden is in my ward; Fortune Green.

2 Labour gains. 1 LD hold.

Labour has undeniably done very well in London, the loss of H+F being painful.

[ObserverIE]

1) Why is the vote count so slow for local elections relative to Westminster elections?  It has been more than 24 hours and it still seems to be going on with only 150 out of 161 councils done.  Is it because some councils have rules saying that counts cannot be done until the Sunday when the Euro elections results are counted?  If not why is this so slow.  Only place I know of that is slower than this is my home county of Westchester of NY state.  But vote counting in Westchester has to be the most incompetent in the whole world.

The London councils (which seem to be the most delayed) generally have multi-member wards where each voter has as many votes as there are seats. The procedure, as I understand it, is first to extract straight-ticket votes (where a voter chose all the candidates from a particular party) from split-ticket votes, where the range of possible combinations take much longer to tabulate.

Most of the earlier councils to declare have only single-seat contests which are simpler to tabulate.

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It's meant to be the latter. London and Scotland, both of which have their reasons for not liking UKIP very much, didn't vote last year and the PVI adjustment last year might have been more generous to UKIP. The other areas that didn't vote last year were the old metropolitan counties whereas almost all of rural and small-town England voted last year but not this year.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Fun and games in Tower Hamlets. Now there's a surprise.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Traditionally squeezed in GL with its many marginals, LD must expect to loose their 3 seats in red InnerLondon (BrentC, Bermondsay&OldSouthwark, Hornsey&WoodGreen). Remain the 4 MPs along the S-fringe, where in theory even Cable's Twickenham were in danger.

Brent Central is almost certainly lost, even if Teather bothered running again. I doubt the LD's put more than a token effort to keep.

Hornsey and Wood Green is a bit safer, but still is Leans/Likely Labour. The LD's weren't cleaned out of Haringey as they were in, say, Islington or Lambeth.

Bermondsay is another story. Hughes has been there forever, even though it's on paper easy Labour territory. If it comes down to the wire, Labour wins; but their could be all sorts of funny variables.

The Lib Dems have the potential to be shut outside the capital entirely, but i don't know how popular the Lib Dem MP's are in the SW of the capital.

[EPG]

You'd have to guess that they would hold onto their two seats in the Sutton council area, right?

[YL]

I would think Vince Cable still has enough of a personal vote not to lose in Twickenham, tuition fees and Royal Mail notwithstanding.

[YL]

Wait, no. Not so. Labour gain Bessacarr & Cantley?!

The Lib Dems had local problems there: see my Doncaster preview back on page 1.  So I don't think them losing is a surprise (NB it was their last South Yorkshire ward outside west and south-west Sheffield) but perhaps it was a surprise that Labour benefitted.

Elsewhere in Yorkshire, Kirklees seems to have been unusually dull, with no seats changing hands, but Labour very, very nearly won control of Calderdale: they ended up one seat short of a majority, and were only 17 votes behind the Tories in Luddendenfoot.  The Lib Dems did distinctly badly there, only winning one ward.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

I see Rahman has been re-elected in Tower Hamlets.

Only realistic response: LOL

[Tetro Kornbluth]

This was posted about 12 hours ago so there may have been minor changes but...