English Local Elections 2006

[Peter]

If you're interested:

Majority map


Winners share map


I got a number of the margainal wards wrong (like everybody else at the count, nobody predicted the Cowley swap, so I think I can be excused for that). I did at least predict the holding of Holywell by the Libs and Lye Valley and Jericho & Osney by Labour correctly.

Got Barton and Quarry the wrong way round. Didn't see the Lib Dems storming from third to first in Headington Hill and didn't account for the wild card factor of some random Indie in Marston. I certainly didn't see the IWCA coming either.

The Lib Dems were kicking themselves - they fought very hard on Holywell, then won it by a few hundred, to discover that Carfax next door was held by the Greens by 23 votes, a ward they could have spent more time on.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

What ward(s) is the town center in?

Castlefields & Quarry; a Con/Lab marginal with a reasonable (in local elections) LibDem vote. Wasn't up this year, but if it was Labour would probably have sneaked it.
The Town Centre shouldn't really be paired with the southern parts of Ditherington though... Ditherington should never have been divided (goes off on rant about gerrymandering), historically it was paired with Bagley, although from the '70's (and quite absurdly) with Porthill. And now with Castlefields.
At county level it is paired with Bagley though, while Ditherington is all in one (safely Labour o/c) division (Castlefields & Ditherington).

[minionofmidas]

Wasn't up this year

Ah, that explains it. None of the names on yr list sounded like it might include the area...

[Storebought]

Do the facts 

(1) the Conservatives won nothing in the "urban heartlands" of the North (only someone from the UK could ever utter that in seriousness)
(2) the win in H&F in inner-city London was mostly based on promises of council tax cuts
(3) in spite of their social liberal remarketing, the Tories had their asses handed to them in the Vale of Snobs -- I mean -- Richmond-upon-Thames
(4) they captured Winchester due to outrage over a homosexual sex scandal involving the Liberal MP

indicate that Cameron is yet another regional leader of the Conservative Party who happened to benefit from a spasm of traditional Toryism in this election?

I sure hope so -- Cameron reminds me of the very worst of a Baldwin and and Eden rolled together.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

No comment

1. That is certainly a big worry for them. They did pretty badly (all things considered) in the North and also in the Midlands (just about all the good news they had north of the Severn/Wash line wasn't actually that good; the District seats up were last contested in 2002. Coventry is the exception, but that was down to the utter ineptness of the local Labour party...).

2. Most of Hammersmith & Fulham isn't what most people think of as Inner City. Used to be quite a rough area, but it's gentrified at an alarming rate over the past few decades and is now one of the richest parts of the U.K (North Hammersmith remains as it was before o/c). The Tories should actually have gained it in 2002.

3. "Valley of the Snobs"; good line. I must steal it immediately...

4. Pretty much, although it wasn't so much the homosexual aspect of the Oaten scandal that caused the problem... more the whole excrement-fetish thing...

Cameron did certainly connect very well with traditional Tory areas though.

[Democratic Hawk]

4. Pretty much, although it wasn't so much the homosexual aspect of the Oaten scandal that caused the problem... more the whole excrement-fetish thing...

I wondered what it was. Ugh

Dave

[Ben.]

You could almost argue that the election was a reverse of the General Eelction last May (I’d expect Al will know better than me on this though ).

Labour see off the LibDems in their “heartlands” but suffer significant losses to the Tories in marginal, competitive districts.     

While the Tories failed to make a breakthrough in the north they did very well against Labour in London, the South and Midlands while making inroads against the LibDems, with the obvious exception of Richmond where a dire Tory council was ousted in an area where Liberals have traditionally had a strong local base.

At the same time as Tories did well against Labour, the LibDems suffered reverses against Labour in the big cities and London, though Labour did see it defence of its core boroughs undermined in places like Brent and Camden they held on spectacularly in Tower Hamlets and Haringey while making gains in Lambeth and substantial gains in Islington.

So perhaps a return to polarisation, likely to be magnified by a Brown premiership?   

[Bono]

These results could have been a good news if David Cameron was anything more than a carbon copy of Blair.

[Peter]

though I'm surprised Crawley had been Labour since 1971

The Crawley of today is a lot different from the Crawley of the late 80s and early 90s. When the Tories were doing genuinely well in local elections (i.e. in that time frame), Crawley was much more working class and didn't have the significant pockets of middle class voters that have since built up in areas like Pound Hill. By the time things started looking demographically favourable for the Tories in the mid 90s, they were doing so awfully in local elections, they didn't stand a chance.

This is juxtaposed against the Parliamentary constituency of Crawley, which from 1983 to 1997 included several rural villages (some of which elect Tory councillors without contests), and stretched across to East Grinstead. It was these voters that made it a regular fixture for Conservatives in general elections. Come the 1997 boundary changes, these wards were cut to just leave the Crawley Borough, making it a sure gain for Labour in 1997 even though parts of the town had become more favourable for the Tories.

A couple of other notes:

Mole Valley District Council (the home of my parents) has for the first time gone Tory. To the casual observer this is something of a surprise - Mole Valley has been consistently cast iron Tory in general elections. As ever, it is the curse of the Residents Associations - they controlled the majority of the North of the District through the 1980s, indeed, they still have a few Councillors up in Ashtead even though the group has formally disbanded.

As we drew into the 1990s, the Lib Dems have picked up support in and around Dorking, so the council remained constantly hung. Only now have the Tories broken through enough to take overall control.

[Democratic Hawk]

These results could have been a good news if David Cameron was anything more than a carbon copy of Blair.

Speaking, as a mildly center-left UK voter, I'm rather happy we have something of a center-right main opposition party, as opposed to a wing nut job one . That said, as a Labour Party member, I'd love a wing nut main opposition party (because that's exactly what they would remain). Things are very different now to the 1980s

In the Macmillan era, I might even have been a paid up member of the Conservative Party but your heroine put me off them for life and for that I'm eternally thankful

Dave

[True Democrat]

So what was the overall popular vote for each party?

[Democratic Hawk]

So what was the overall popular vote for each party?

Conservatives 40%; Lib Dem 27%; Labour 26%. Basically, the Lib Dems and Labour are at the same level as in the 2004 locals, the Conservatives up 2%. Labour went on to win the General Election in 2005

I wonder how many seats, nationally, went uncontested by Labour because the failure of all three major parties to contest all seats can skew the popular vote

Indeed, its not unsual for general elections, local elections and European parliamentary elections to produce rather diverse results. Since 1997, Labour has performed poorly in European elections, especially, and in local elections in recent years. Yet the party has retained a virtual hegemony in the metropolitan districts at the parliamentary level since 1997. Locally, in the metropolitan districts, Labour strength has been eroding since around 2000

So what you have is voters happy to elect Conservative councils and Labour MPs, which was not unusual during the late 1980s and early 1990s, but reversed

As things stand though, a hung parliament is a real possibility unless the mood shifts in Labour's favor. The Conservatives seem certain to make significant gains, especially, in outer London and the Southeast but they still have a mountain to climb for a parliamentary majority. It won't much for Labour to lose its majority - the 2005 election resulted in a lot of super Lab/Con marginals - but it will take a lot for the Conservatives to gain one

Dave

[minionofmidas]

So what was the overall popular vote for each party?

Note that that's not the national vote, since large parts of the country didn't hold a vote on this day.

[Ben.]

So what was the overall popular vote for each party?

Conservatives 40%; Lib Dem 27%; Labour 26%. Basically, the Lib Dems and Labour are at the same level as in the 2004 locals, the Conservatives up 2%. Labour went on to win the General Election in 2005

I wonder how many seats, nationally, went uncontested by Labour because the failure of all three major parties to contest all seats can skew the popular vote

Indeed, its not unsual for general elections, local elections and European parliamentary elections to produce rather diverse results. Since 1997, Labour has performed poorly in European elections, especially, and in local elections in recent years. Yet the party has retained a virtual hegemony in the metropolitan districts at the parliamentary level since 1997. Locally, in the metropolitan districts, Labour strength has been eroding since around 2000

So what you have is voters happy to elect Conservative councils and Labour MPs, which was not unusual during the late 1980s and early 1990s, but reversed

As things stand though, a hung parliament is a real possibility unless the mood shifts in Labour's favor. The Conservatives seem certain to make significant gains, especially, in outer London and the Southeast but they still have a mountain to climb for a parliamentary majority. It won't much for Labour to lose its majority - the 2005 election resulted in a lot of super Lab/Con marginals - but it will take a lot for the Conservatives to gain one

Dave

Hawk.

Your about right, I think the lesson from the local elections, with regards to where the parties stand at the moment, is…

Labour:Static, while the Labour party undoubtedly lost votes amongst moderate, suburban, swing voters (predominantly in the South, Midlands and London) they also gained votes by solidify their base amongst (for want of a better word) blue collar, white, working class voters and also (as show in Brum) reasserted their position amongst voters from ethnic minorities. In short; Labour lost ground amongst independent “swing voters” but accommodated that through consolidating it traditional base of support.


Conservatives: Progress, but probably well short of what they would need to secure a parliamentary majority. Conservative gains where predominantly in areas of traditional (often pre ’97) strength but they also did well in typically competitive areas like Brum, Wolverhampton, Portsmouth etc… Crucially the Tories made significant gains against the LibDems, Winchester, Southwest London (with the exception of Richmond), Milton Keynes are all competitive at the parliamentary level and could provide useful indicators for the Con/LibDem fight at the next election ( for example - Sutton& Chelmsford saw a dramatic swing to the Tories who now hold the majority of council seats in a libdem constituency that they held by 4,000 last time round).

The Conservatives did, however, fail disastrously to make any kind of break through in the great northern cities. While Tories did well in Leeds and Brum, in the cities where they have not had representation since the ‘90’s they are still without any councillors, the Tories need to be competitive (at the local level at least) in the big cites and that means rebuilding long derelict political machines, which will take a long time, gains next year might, however, be feasible.     

Cameron did not make the mistake of his predecessors by triumphantly hailing the Tory result as meaning they would shortly be sweeping to power (as Hauge, IDS and Howard all did ), instead he said it was a good result (an excellent result in London quite frankly!) but a lot had to be done, I think that is a fair assessment.


Liberal Democrats: A net gain of 2… yes 2! Council seats! That compares with a net gain of 300+ for the Tories, and this in a year when most of the seats that are up for grabs are in urban areas where the LibDems had been making progress against Labour.  In addition to securing very little progress and even falling back, against Labour, they suffered losses to the Tories in places like Winchester, Sutton, Kingston and Cheltenham suggesting that Cameron’s courting of conservatives who switched to the LibDem in the ‘90s is having some impact.

There really is not way to spin it positively for the LibDems, they lost votes to Labour (though LibDem progress in areas like Camden, Haringey and Brent at the GE was born out), as labour consolidated its traditional base and lost votes to the Tories as the Tories won back white collar, districts like Southwest London and the affluent suburbs, towns and commuter villages of the south.     

As for the next election I think (and bearing in mind we are a very long way out) Labour’s vote might remain fairly solid, loses amongst swing voters will probably be offset by increased margins in its traditional heartlands, not that this will help it very much in winning a majority. Prediction? 33-36% of the vote, as things stand   

The Tories seem to have, very successfully, reasserted themselves as “The opposition party” (something which since ’02 the LibDems had been), furthermore the Tory vote would certainly seem to have increased, both in traditional areas of strength (some lost in ‘90s to Labour and the LibDems) and in traditionally marginal areas. Overall the Tory performance and their current state probably suggests that they’ll be able to secure something in the range of 34-37%, but they will probably be able to put on votes in areas “where it matters” unlike Labour.

LibDems?  Falling back against the Tories in the South East and London, seems likely, as does the Tories picking up the votes of those who voted LibDem at the last election out of sheer desperation (not the disaffected leftists so much as the “exasperated of middle England” – even in the marginal seats where the LibDems where distant thirds their vote went up). 

The LibDem threat to Labour in many urban areas seems to have receded, however, their new base amongst liberal, left of centre, white collar, predominantly public sector workers seems to have held in some areas and they may yet offset losses to the Tories in places like Sutton, Twickenham and Richmond with gains in Holborn, Hampstead and Brent… but I think that Labour would probably hold on. Prediction? Share of the vote anywhere between 17-21%, but probably likely to see their number of seats dip bellow 45, mostly to the benefit of the Tories. 

[Harry Hayfield]

So what was the overall popular vote for each party?

National Projected Vote Share: Con 40% Lib Dem 27% Lab 26% Others 7%
ACTUAL General Election Shares: Lab 38% Con 36% Lib Dem 21% Others 5%

[Filuwaúrdjan]

So what was the overall popular vote for each party?

Don't know; Rallings & Thrasher haven't added up all the ward results yet. You'll have to be patient I'm afraid...

...the dodgy BBC poll of wards was 40/27/26 but it's completely meaningless IMO. They only do it so they can run with a pre-selected headline for their early morning news programmes...

...not that even Rallings & Thrashers figures are especially useful.

[Peter]

(click image to enlarge)

Those are the party share breakdowns across the city. Most interesting is how the Green share is just about the inverse of the Labour share.

[minionofmidas]

Good to see the Tories not even running candidates everywhere. What about IWCA.

And who ever accused you of being "just"?

[Peter]

Good to see the Tories not even running candidates everywhere. What about IWCA.

They screwed the nomination forms up it appears, though the only place this mattered was Marston (the most Northerly of their uncontested wards) because in the rest of the wards they struggle to break 10% of the PV.

The IWCA ran in only 4 wards, so I didn't bother. If you are interested in the %s, see Wikipedia's article

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Nobody to my knowledge. I'm using the abverb "just" as opposed to the adjective.

[minionofmidas]

Tankee you.

[Peter]

Only place in Surrey that wasn't a bluewash was Woking, which is actually creeping back towards Lib Dem overall control. Labour lost all 5 of their councillors up for re-election in Surrey. Only two more years and a complete wipeout might be witnessed.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

We have councillers in Surrey?

[Peter]

15 district councillors remain, out of nearly 500.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

15 district councillors remain, out of nearly 500.

As many as 15?

[minionofmidas]

15 district councillors remain, out of nearly 500.

As many as 15?

And two county councillors.