2023 UK Local Elections

[oldtimer]

This is actually a really impressive performance by the Lib Dems — they’ve only gained slightly over 100 fewer seats than Labour have (which is obviously a much bigger proportional gain) — and that’s despite the fact that in a lot of the relevant councils (especially those where the Tories are their main opponents), they already had exceptionally good results in 2019.

The expectations for the Lib Dems were also fairly low because of the high floor they had from 2019 going into these elections. Really strong overperformance for them. Labour of course also doing well, but more like meeting what were definitely very high expectations going in than exceeding them.

And the Greens are putting up as much of an overperformance as the Lib Dems or more, although even more than the Lib Dems it's hard to necessarily think of them as a nationally cohesive party at local elections. I can't imagine the newly elected majority in Mid Suffolk would agree with the Green caucus in Brighton on almost any issue beyond some very localist preservationist concerns. Is Mid Suffolk the first council to elect a Green majority?

Indeed. Rather a funny place for it to happen too — I suspect most would have bet on Brighton or Bristol being the first!

In local elections when people are dissatisfied they tend to vote for the most known opposition that hasn't been tried yet, hence smaller parties are more favoured.

[Oryxslayer]

Whenever Amber Valley finishes it may end up being one of if not the place with the raw largest tory loss of councilors - redistricting made a mess of the wards, the Tories were at a historic high point, and everyone is up on the ballot. Labour are already fmaking mass flips.

[oldtimer]

Also to consider is that the Conservatives started from the very low base of the 2019 local results.

So their vote getting depressed even further into record low territory will give weird results, as the small parties start to beat them in a lot of random places.

It's worse than 1997, because they already where scrapping at all time lows in the final days of Theresa May.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

This is actually a really impressive performance by the Lib Dems — they’ve only gained slightly over 100 fewer seats than Labour have (which is obviously a much bigger proportional gain) — and that’s despite the fact that in a lot of the relevant councils (especially those where the Tories are their main opponents), they already had exceptionally good results in 2019.

They've done better than could have been rationally predicted, which is not a thing that happens often. I wonder whether one issue is that so many Con groups in certain parts of the country don't have much functional campaigning strength these days?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Whenever Amber Valley finishes it may end up being one of if not the place with the raw largest tory loss of councilors - redistricting made a mess of the wards, the Tories were at a historic high point, and everyone is up on the ballot. Labour are already fmaking mass flips.

Good God, Labour are sweeping Heanor. The Brexit Era really is dead.

[JimJamUK]

Good God, Labour are sweeping Heanor. The Brexit Era really is dead.

Labour 50 votes off winning in Swanwick. The reactionary Midlands swing voter has truly gone off the Tories right now.

[Logical]

Whenever Amber Valley finishes it may end up being one of if not the place with the raw largest tory loss of councilors - redistricting made a mess of the wards, the Tories were at a historic high point, and everyone is up on the ballot. Labour are already fmaking mass flips.

If you count the East Sussex districts as one then Tories lost more than 50 seats there. In fact the Tories had a total meltdown in almost every district touching the South coast.

[oldtimer]

Whenever Amber Valley finishes it may end up being one of if not the place with the raw largest tory loss of councilors - redistricting made a mess of the wards, the Tories were at a historic high point, and everyone is up on the ballot. Labour are already fmaking mass flips.

Good God, Labour are sweeping Heanor. The Brexit Era really is dead.

In the 1970's the swing voters where Enoch Powell and his followers.

Whoever they supported, or at least not opposed to, won.
You could see it clearly with the swings in 1970, 74 and 79 in Powell's territory.

For the past 10 years or so the swing voters are Farage and his followers.

They currently hate the current version of the Conservative government so much they vote Labour to get rid of it.

I've seen this thing before.

[TheTide]

The Greens are now the largest party on Folkestone & Hythe Council, with Labour second. Not exactly a place one associates with ecological and/or socialist politics.

[omar04]

All 7 UKIP councillors could lose their seats in 2023: http://www.opencouncildata.co.uk/councillors.php?p=352&y=2022

UKIP lost all 6 councillors they had, running just 46 candidates.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

The Greens are now the largest party on Folkestone & Hythe Council, with Labour second. Not exactly a place one associates with ecological and/or socialist politics.

It will be interesting to see how the Greens as an organization will deal with potentially having a more small c conservative, older and parochial electorate/councillors than the stereotype of its cadre - I don't think the media seems to have realised this either.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Big Labour majority on Amber Valley district (which includes Heanor), to complete Labour's eye-poppingly good showing in Derbyshire.

[beesley]

Don't suppose I'm in anyone's thoughts but pleased at the results in Southampton as well as my former home in Windsor and Maidenhead, in many ways the latter pleases me more.

[Torrain]

Don't suppose I'm in anyone's thoughts but pleased at the results in Southampton as well as my former home in Windsor and Maidenhead, in many ways the latter pleases me more.

I remember you celebrating when Labour won Southampton City Council back last year. I’m amazed how Labour have converted Southampton from a marginal to a Leeds/Liverpool sized majority…

Nice to have you back on a crazy election day.

[Torrain]

Quite a striking map of post-election council control. Just the sheer visibility of the Lib Dems stands out:

[Nyvin]

https://twitter.com/BalancePowerUK/status/1654531100406841349

[Torrain]

https://twitter.com/thehistoryguy/status/1654364186145693698

[CumbrianLefty]

Labour Barely retain the largest party in fractured Lancaster. but the fracturing actually is less that 2019. The Tories and localists got squeezed out by Labour and the Green dogfight.

Greens were briefing in recent days that they were likely to be the biggest party and could even be within reach of a majority - they might be just a little disappointed with the actual results given the splits in the (traditionally rather left wing) local Labour party in the last few years.

[JimJamUK]

Greens were briefing in recent days that they were likely to be the biggest party and could even be within reach of a majority - they might be just a little disappointed with the actual results given the splits in the (traditionally rather left wing) local Labour party in the last few years.

The semi-implosion of Lancaster Labour Party was not enough to overcome the implosion of the Morecambe Bay Independents.

[Mike88]

Conservatives gain the Bedford mayoral election from the Lib Dems by just 145 votes.

[Tintrlvr]

Conservatives gain the Bedford mayoral election from the Lib Dems by just 145 votes.

Hodgson losing is a surprise. But clearly the Tories benefited from the switch to FPTP here, as well as tactical voting failures. They won with under a third of the vote and nearly all of the remaining votes were Labour or Green.

[Coldstream]

Be interesting to see if the Greens will try to replicate their success in the locals in parliamentary elections - or if they’ll just run a Bristol West by-election campaign for the third general election running. I’d have to imagine they’d at least have a chance in Bury St Edmunds or whatever Mid Suffolk looks like in the next GE on those numbers.

Will also be interesting to see what, if any, cooperation there is between the Lib Dem’s and Greens in the next GE. As an example a seat like Lewes should be an obvious Tory loss, but if the Lib Dem’s and Greens did both go hard at it - the Tories could survive on ~30%.

[AustralianSwingVoter]

No seismic losses for Labour in Liverpool, despite all that has happened.

One ward was won with 91 votes. No, you did read that correctly, not by, with.

Any reason it was so low turnout ?

IIRC they've re-done the new wards based on future modelling of population or something weird and some of the city centre ones have v few actual residents (restaurants & hotels can't vote!)

As I recall this one new ward takes in the entire Waterside regeneration district (the thing that lost them their UNESCO status!). A bevy of construction that’ll eventually have 20,000 flats.

[Oryxslayer]

One of the most interesting 'deep data' results from these elections has to be from the Black Country. Not that the Tories held on, no that's purely the product of the thirds system of electing councilors. If everyone was up, or if one of the 2021 or 2022 classes were then the region would be just as red as the rest of the country. More I think its interesting because the Tories effectively matched 2019 here, whereas almost everywhere else - including such safe areas as Lincolnshire or the rural eastern shires - saw the bottom fall out. But Labour didn't advance at all in the Black Country councils. This is in contrast to other urban Leave-voting areas that are demographically similar which are all going to have Labour administrations of one type or another thanks to big Labour gains.

Which makes one wonder if the 2019 results here are the good-for-Labour benchmarks. Which would be interesting both because there are a lot of theoretical target seats here in a GE, and cause the boundary review theoretically made the seats better for them by reapportioning some of seats and spreading the Labour wards around to those seats which reman.

[Death of a Salesman]

Be interesting to see if the Greens will try to replicate their success in the locals in parliamentary elections - or if they’ll just run a Bristol West by-election campaign for the third general election running. I’d have to imagine they’d at least have a chance in Bury St Edmunds or whatever Mid Suffolk looks like in the next GE on those numbers.

Will also be interesting to see what, if any, cooperation there is between the Lib Dem’s and Greens in the next GE. As an example a seat like Lewes should be an obvious Tory loss, but if the Lib Dem’s and Greens did both go hard at it - the Tories could survive on ~30%.

There's a semi-plausible scenario where the Tories wind up as the third largest party in England in 2029. If they're at 25% of the vote, their coalition is not winning all that many seats. If Starmer runs a relatively centrist government and doesn't try to rejoin the EU, there will definitely be some left-wing opposition to his government, and the LDs and Greens could try to exploit it. You could see a world where Labour gets 40%, the Tories drop down to 22% or so, and the Liberal Democrats and Greens form an alliance (socially liberal and pro rejoining the EU), that runs Green candidates in left-wing constituencies and Lib Dems in Blue Wall constituencies and which manages 27%.

Trying to roughly model how seats would break, I get something like this.



The Tory vote is very inefficient here, and they're lucky to be getting 23 seats. There are only two seats where their majority is more than 5% of the turnout. They lose narrowly in many firmly Tory seats such as Richmond and South West Norfolk, but a tiny shift towards Labour and they're gone.

 Labour dominates across the North, but they struggle in many wealthy or heavily Remain constituencies (the Greens win Starmer's and Corbyn's constituencies here, for instance). Their majority is sweeping and they win the median seat by 8 points. This result would infuriate the Labour Left, but Starmer would probably respond to it by carpetbagging to a less liberal constituency and keeping the balancing act.


The Liberal Democrats are the official opposition, but the Greens do quite well in London too. I split up seats by results in 2019, but the local elections would indicate that some of those seats should go to the Greens instead.

Right now, polls are at
Labour: 45%
Tories: 28%
Lib Dem + Green: 15%

and local elections were
Labour: 35%
Tories: 24%
Lib Dem + Green: 29%

So the Tories bleed out to a conservative (~ish) Labour government, while the Lib Dem Green pact keeps most of the voters they won this year and adds in a fair number of London liberals no longer concerned about vote splitting.

This isn't a very likely outcome, but something along these lines seems basically possible.