Thread 2: Do the locals tell us much about a general election?
May 6th, 2007
Can we extrapolate in the way the Sunday Times does?
Both the Sunday Times and the Sunday Telegraph carry projections this morning about what Thursday’s results would mean in general election terms.
In the Telegraph Professor John Curtice of Strathclyde suggests that the CON-LAB-LD split was 40%-27%-26% which he suggests would give the Tories an overall majority of 20 seats.
The Sunday Times projection of a 54 overall seat for the Tories is based on work by Professors Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher, of Plymouth University’ who suggest that the Tories were on 40% national (up one on their calculations last year) and that Labour remained static on 26%.
But local elections are very different from general elections when Labour finds it easier to mobilise its vote. And of course local elections are often very much determined by local factors which don’t weigh as heavily on voters’ minds when they are voting on what should happen at Westminster.
Turnout makes a massive difference and in the locals this is usually quite low. In such a context it is the best organised parties on the ground that usually end up making most progress. In a general there’s much less variation and the issues are very much determined by how the national media is reporting things.
The other “unreal factor” this year is the Labour leadership. Nobody can really forecast how Labour will go down with the voters when Tony Blair is out of the way. There have been many polls but we’ll have to see how electors take to Labour’s new leadership before coming to firmer conclusions.
Congratulations to ICM. The pollster for the Scotsman, ICM, appears to be the clear winner in predicting the Scottish parliament election. The firm had an average error of 1.6% on the constituency vote against Yougov’s average error of 2.8% and Populus’s 3.2%.
With the regional list ICM recorded a 1.5% error; Populus 1.3% and Yougov 1.8%.
I have not bothered to calculate the error from non-BPC listed, MRUK, but if the firm or the paper that published the polls had taken me up on my £1,000 wager offer I would have won easily. As I said at the time - ignore.
Mike Smithson author of “The Political Punter”
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If the results of local elections in mid-term had anything to do with a general election 2 years later, we wouldn’t have had a decade of Thatcher with vast parliamentary majorities. Two years is a long time in politics. There are different issues at stake. The turnout is much higher in general elections. People can feel that they are making a protest in mid-term elections. And half a dozen other standard clichés.
Woken up by loud birdsong at 4am I discover today is International Dawn Chorus day. An apposite day for all the politicians to be readying themselves to spin results on the early morning politics shows. The R&T analysis seems to be to explain the unexpected LD losses - a fall of 2% against a Tory rise of 1% over the past year. Agree that Labour voters had no motivation to turn out so the real GE voting intentions may well be different but 40:30:20 +/- 2% does feel about right currently.
The LDs have the hardest decisins to make now - in Scotland pressure from Ming towards propping up Labour which would I think greatly damage their chances, with same in Wales. Think both LD & Conservative leaderships will come under scrutiny in both countries - my feeling is the LD leaders didn’t shine but Conservative ones did enough to survive and it will damage the Tories to change leaders more than benefit them. LDs would probably benefit from new faces.
A comment on the final tally of seat and council gains.Taking the two outstanding councils.
Breckland current figures Con 48,Lab 8,Oth 4.Labour are likely to lose atleast 6 of their 8 sets to the Tories.
In Warwick the figures are Con 17,Lab 14,Lib Dem 9,Oth 6.
Labour likelt to lose around 8 seats to the Tories,Who may even just snatch the council as a whole.Overall the likely gains and losses mean the final Tory seat gains will exceed 900, with Labour losses more than 500.
Local elections tell us little about the overall elction result.For a start in this set of elections Lib Dems usually have a share about 5% above there National opinion poll ratings withe Tories getting around a 3% premium and Labour around 8% less.This would equate to National shares of 21%,38%and 35%which sounds tooo high for Labour(but as observed before the BBC shares are suspect.
Also since they are mid term they are a snapshot at th ewrong time.Interestingly looking at ICM national polls preceding the last two elections the best indicator of final election shares is the average of the polls in the yera preceding an election.By then people appear to have more or less made their mind up.
Local elections do however matter in terms of defining winnable seats.Many of Lib dems gains in thepast have been built on gaining control of local councils preceding the election eg Colchester,Taunton,Winchester.It seems that this gives credibility particularly to a third party. I guess that winning control of a council that is Lab/tory marginalhelps too.
Roger H
2 A 2% fall in LibDem vote share with a 1% rise in Conservative vote share does not explain that number of LibDem losses . There were some who forecast LibDem losses of a similar magnitude but they were expecting a vote share of 23% or so . Given that vote share I would have expected 80 to 100 losses but the number was boosted by very large losses in a small number of councils .
I agree with generally with your other comments .
3 Actual Conservative gains will in fact exceed 1,000 because the BBC figures shown for each council are net gains . To take a simple example Huntingdon , the BBC shows Con -1 LibDem +1 . In fact there were 2 LibDem gains from Con but 1 Con gain from LibDem . Other councils have even more complex changes Bradford for example with Conservative gains from 1 party being masked by losses to other parties .
5 I think we generally accept only net gains/losses.
Locals and nationals are not the same but lose cllrs = lose activists.
Going backwards in the North, Wales and Scotland is bedrock losses, and that adds to the sense of decline and malaise - can Gordo get rid of it? All is possible but I doubt it. I think the bounce will be of short duration even if he swears to detest the Stars & Stripes for all time or whatever other faddy nonsense he does
4.Mark john Curtice gives the reason why -vote share changes are v 2004.Most of seat changes result from contests in all up councils last contested in 2003 against which there is a bigger improvement in Tory vote.
Roger H
5 Mark
in the Telegraph Curtice has an article based around the BBC key wards (R&T I think is on overall votes) which shows that LDs lost more in North, then Midlands and then South as compared to 2004. Picture seems to be that the anti-Iraq vote in North is going home to Labour (or at least starting to) while in South the damage from Conservatives is more on Labour. Depends on how well the key wards have been selected of course - comparison of R&T and Curtice figs shows LDs at 24% or 26%.
Could have considerable affect on outcomes in 2009 or 2010 as LDs might well suffer disproportionately with tactical unwind and no Scots, Welsh or Northern growth.
Re 8 Ted, “LDs lost more in North, then Midlands and then South as compared to 2004. Picture seems to be that the anti-Iraq vote in North is going home to Labour.”
This was identified on PBC as the likely scenario when Brown took over. The polls indicated that this shift from LD to Labour would take place. It looks like it has started just as Brown has started to take over.
Mike. I think you should give Populus a recount. 29 Labour 33 SNP is surely closer than Yougov’s 31 Labour 37 SNP on the constituency vote?
Congratulations to ICM and Populus on both constituency and regional votes. Remarkable results.
Are any of the Welsh Conservatives able to explain this oddment in the Guardians. On the seat count they show them making no gains but according to the accompanying article they made four.
Grandpa Ming should know enough to stand down voluntarily, but he doesn’t.
He will (inappopriately?) be ‘rescued’ by the next bye-election. The LDs are certain to do comparitively much better than the tories because their on-the-ground operation is still so much better organised and harder working.
DC is repairing the tory brand competently enough, and they are now competitive. But they are nowhere near the mean and dirty election winning machine that was Nulab in the mid-90s. For proof, see the next bye-election.
Roger do keep up dear
4 gains in consituencies with resulting loss of three regional top ups.
I think it was four fptp seats, which shows great promise for the GE
re 10. Roger - I was taking an average across four parties not just the top two. One feature in the polling was how all the final surveys had significant underestimates of the Tory shares.
OK - I’ll try to be objective.
Scotland - good night for the SNP, but nothing like as good as some had expected. Bad for Labour, and LD performance was poor too. Some comfort for Tories in that they may have more than one Westminster MP next time round.
Wales - bad for Labour, neutral for LDs and slightly better than neutral for Tories and PC. At least PC held Ceridigeon.
England - very little you can tell from this. Superficially, excellent for Tories and poor for Labour and LDs. But there was so much guff talked on election night. You can’t say from this that the Tories are certain to win the next election, but I don’t fall for the Labour line that the Tories should be getting 47%.
-Beeb said that the Tories should be winning councils like Maidstone. Rubbish! The Tories have not controlled Maidstone since 1982, but have still managed to win the parliamentary seat fairly easily at every election.
-There are a lot of solid Tory Parliamentary seats where the LDs did very badly. In GE terms, does it matter the LD losing seats in, say, Tonbridge and Malling? T&M is a safe Tory seat, and LD to Tory switches there count for nothing in Westminster terms.
-The interesting areas are LD / Tory GE battlegrounds. There were good LD results - Taunton, Eastbourne, Eastleigh - and very bad N Devon and Torbay. I think most sitting MPs must feel quite comfortable, but not Adrian Sanders or Nick Harvey.
-Tories having no councillors in some of the big cities is of no significance. The Tories will not admit this as it would send out the wrong messages. But they do not need to win seats within the boroughs of Liverpool, Manchester, etc. (And they already have plenty of of councillors in the suburbs, so that bodes well).
-Labour were always going to lose seats on Thursday, and results such as Dartford are significant. But quite a lot of the Labour losses were in areas that already have Tory MPs. The good thing for Labour was staving off a LD march in many areas.
So Ming? He was not my choice for leader, as he has been less effective than I thought. I give him 18 months maximum as leader. I am sure he will go quietly and when least expected. It will be Clegg v Huhne v stalking horse from the left (Russell? Harris?)
Re Nick Harvey - I think we had expected to lose N Devon for some time. It is like Richmond - had been Liberal for so long that the LDs have become the establishment there - eventually people feel it is time for a change. I would still bet on Nick keeping that seat.
Thanks Ted!
Mike. Sorry to be nerdy but according to the Guardian the final figures on the constituency vote were SNP 33 Labour 32 Tory 17 Lib 16
Yougov’s final figures were 37, 31, 13, 14.
Populus’s were 33, 29, 13, 15.
I’m no mathematician but Populus’s look closer.
PS. I agree. There are still ’shy’ Tories in Scotland!
18 cont…The Yougov and Populus final two figures should be reversed
Roger - I was basing my figures on -
Constituency vote
YouGov LAB 31: SNP 37: CON 13: LD 14
ICM LAB 32: SNP 34: CON 13: LD 16
Populus LAB 29: SNP 33: CON 13: LD 15
The actuals were - LAB 32.2: SNP 32.9: CON 16.6: LD 16.2
Regional list:-
YouGov LAB 27: SNP 32: CON 13: LD 10
ICM LAB 29: SNP 30: CON 13: LD 16
Populus LAB 28: SNP 31: CON 14: LD 15
The actuals were - LAB 29.2: SNP 31: CON 13.9: LD 11.3
Any attempt to extrapolate Thursday results to a General Election is just plain daft.
A heavy slice of the Lib Dem losses were confined to four or five councils, Torbay, Waverley, Malvern Hills etc. On the contrary gains in Winchester which might not have been expected.
Have to remember that they were defending heavy gains in 2003 and that is why I forecast heavy losses. Same will happen next year.However looking at the Labour Lib Dem situation it is clear that Prime Minister was talking daft as well. They held up well against Labour, Durham is a very good example, a place I know and love well.
A change of leadership might change things though, could go either way, but may be worth the risk.
The critical thing about the Locals is that Labour has been wiped out Pretty much in the South (London was bad too lat year) and The Tories are strong elsewhere except in metropolitan centres.
The worst of it is the activists have disappeared for New Labour, Membership I understand has dropped significantly whereas the Conservatives membership figures are considerably up.
Activists make the difference in elections. that’s why Labour need a miracle IMHO.
21. It isn’t 4 or 5 councils - you could add Bournemouth, S Norfolk, Carrick, Uttlesford, Windsor, N Somerset, E Riding of Yorks, Herefordshire, York, West Berks, North Wiltshire, and South Ribble to the list of places where the LDs suffered heavy losses…and significantly many of these places are either LD held seats or places where the LDs have recently been challenging at a parliamentary level.
23 - In addition to Torbay and N Devon, there are other LD seats in trouble - notably Hereford. But not many. I would be interested to know how many may be deemed to be in trouble. It suggests a handful of LD seats to be lost to the Tories. And Newbury will never be won back - but we knew that already.
But don’t read too much into the locals. Remember that the Tories swept London Borough of Richmond in 2002 - but I don’t recall Susan Kramer and Vince Cable being losers in 2005.
23 You must stop putting out this false information Yellow Peril . For interest the local results totals in the Bath wards were Con 10866 Lab 1251 LibDem 12089 Others 5826 . There were 2 gains by Conservative from LibDem but 3 gains by LibDem from Conservative . Suggest you stick more to your 1 line sarcastic comments .
24. You can’t have it both ways - first your spin is that results in LD/Tory marginals were ‘good’ and thus that the overall heavy LD losses don’t mean much for the next GE. Now when this is revealed to be inaccurate you say ‘don’t read too much into the locals’. Honestly…
Yellow Peril, I know that, all I was saying was there are four or five which amount to almost half the total losses. Why make a great point out of virtually nothing.
I live in a Labour marginal, the ward I hold saw Labour drop to third place for the first time ever in living memory. But it has as much meaning to a General Election result as the man on the moon.
27. OK so the spin line is now settled it seems, with a bland ‘the locals are irrelevant for a GE’ the new mantra. Well, the complacency of this is very encouraging.
25. I didn’t mention Bath - I mentioned N Somerset where the LDs lost 15 seats.
Yellow Peril. I give up on you. I have been around many many years and am not interested in spinning this or that. I abhor the very concept.
I was one of the few who forecast heavy Lib Dem losses, and they will have to suffer more next year because of their success in 2004. After that they will probably be gaining again.
But it means nothing for General Elections.
Doing the old “General vs Local” formula, I get:
Con 37%
Lab 37%
Lib Dem 20%
Others 6%
which at a rough guess produces a Lab hung parliament
31 The baseline extrapolation from the locals to notional national is dodgy enough, but to add another extrapolation based on more thoeretical relationships leaves you with something close to fantasy.
All the locals show is that the opinion polls seem to be more or less on target with Tories leading and Labour someway behind and the LibDems wobbling.
re 31. No Harry - your numbers produce a Labour overall majority.
Well, the locals tell us that the Conservatives are making progress, and now have more foot soldiers than they had in the past which is key to getting out the vote.
I think we are on our way to number 10, but only after some very very hard work on the ground.
27 - You accuse me of spin! Ha! It is fair to say the LD / Tory marginals were OKish in the main, if you read anything into them. However, I would not claim that Eastbourne looks in the bag for the next election; in fact I would be very surprised if the LDs won it. Now if I was spinning, it would be different… but as I said, I don’t read too much into the local elections.
If you think locals are a good indicator, then the Tory LD battlegrounds were tolerable results for the LDs in the main. I’d prefer not to read anything into them, and still be afraid of the Cameron threat.
Some year soo, the Tories will be so powerful if local government that, barring huge gains in say Manchester, it will be very difficult to make year on year gains. When will that be? Labour peaked in about 1996 and have been going down since then I believe.
When can we expect Labour gains? (When did Tory gains start? 1998?)
31 Labour to gain 2% on their 2005 outcome? Don’t see it - we’ve seen Gordon’s strategy in Scotland and its same as Labour played in 2001 & 2005 (don’t vote for them their sums don’t add up/can’t deliver their promises). He’s a good politician but Labours support has been ebbing way since 1997 and Cameron/Osborne have been positioning well against Gordons big clunking fist.
If there is any unlikely gain it’ll be at expense of the LDs as anti-Iraq votes return to Labour and much of that will be in Labour heartlands and any seat benefit there could be lost in the suburbs of the North by middle classs northerners returning to Conservatives
14. Re-paste for you I think.
180 Of the natural Conservative-leaning seats (say, the ones they won at the 1992 General Election), they only missed the VoG — and that by a whisker.
The Tories last won the old Pembrokeshire seat at a GE in 1987 — Nick Ainger took it in 1992. The Tories last held seats like Bridgend in the landslide years, and seats like the Gwyr not even then.
They didn’t overtake Plaid — which I guess they will be disappointed about.
But, the Tories did ample to suggest at the GE, they could take enough seats in Wales to be consistent with a winning majority of 20 or 30 overall.
by Gwynfa May 5th, 2007 at 5:34 pm
How’s the new Romsey seat on these results (genuinely curious)?
Eastleigh looks safer for the Libs.
Somerton and Frome (no idea what wards go into this one)?
Southport looks like a negligible swing (looking at top results from 2004, a small fraction of one percent Con - LD; don’t think we can call that much change).
How’s St Austell & Newquay (Tories did quite well down that neck of the woods, I believe)?
Bath?
Superficially, Cornwall North looks good for the Tories.
Cornwall SE looks good for the LDs (again, superficially)
Devon North and Torbay good for the Tories, as you’ve already said.
No news from Cheltenham, Carshalton & Wallington, Richmond Park, Sutton & Cheam, of course.
Gotta go - family calling.
36 There should be some very modest Labour gains next year as 2004 was their rock bottom in the Mets and Districts and Unitaries that have annual or in a few cases biannual elections .
39 Bath figures were given above . Devon North LibDems just outpolled the Conservatives . Will have a look at Romsey next .
Kinnock paid by company who provided faulty vote-counting machines.
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23395179-details/Kinnock%27s+%C2%A333%2C000+job+with+computer+firm+in+poll+fiasco/article.do
Cheers, Mark.
Overall, it looks pretty mixed for Lib Dem vs Tory constituency battles - and, of course, calling anything this far out is a bit.
Most look as though we can’t really conclude anything (small swings).
39. I have always felt in Hampshire Huhne would survive as most likely, getting better known, 2nd time round bounce, plua a large Labour vote left to squeeze. None of those apply in either Romsey or Winchester pace Mr Senior where “special factors” apply. Only James Gray may give them one against the trend, but I think the Tory tide is strong enough to carry even him over the finish line.
41.BTW O/T, but Kirst Will iams is soon to challenge for Lib Dem leadership in the Wales. What are the rules for this. Was I proved correct on Mont.
Curtice and Thrasher have both looked very poor over the last few days, Thrasher was flailing about on the TV trying not to backtrack on the second year of poor predictions that they’d made. They are both still doing damage limitation on their reputations.
The tories seem to have targetted incredibly if they are only at 40%, the others also sem to have completely lost the art of targetting. What is wrong here? I know it’s a comparison to four years ago but any sort of nationally similar swing doesn’t seem to add up to the seat change figures.
Quick summation
Tony Blair - My legacy is a springboard for success and if we don’t win the next election it’s Gordon who is to blame
Ming - We won Eastbourne!
Cameron -
SNP & Plaid -
Re 44. Huhne was brilliant on Newsnight on Friday in what could have been a difficult discussion. He must be the best possible candidate for Ming’s replacement.
44 Romsey Con led by 3,100 over LibDems in local votes this year . Someron/Frome they led by just over 1,000 but depends on 3,700 Ind vote distribution so still very tight . LibDems won the Mendip votes comfortably the Conservatives the South Somerset votes the same . Winchester Oaten effect faded this year Con lead fell from 2,650 last year to 700 this year , 3 wards with no election this year so the totals still have last year’s figures included .
47 - Huhne has considerably improved his media presentation since the leadership election, I’ve still got some concerns but I’d be much happier if he was leader now than I was before.
45
Agree this is the second successive year that these two alledged experts have been shown to be hopeless and if that’s not enough, we then get their inaccurate prose repeated in the weekend newspapers and then for good measure they are speakers at the BPC conference.
Surely it’s not that difficult to find some competent people?
44 Don’t think the Montgomery result showed either of us correct , a very modest swing of around 1% which could have been caused by many factors so a nil nil draw there , Punter .
One of the pleasures of old time election nights was the concentration on poll experts during the first part of the programme. Politicians were not wheeled in until much later, when the results were clear and they were relaxed, funny and human. Now they are there from the start, spinning away, being asked to comment on the first result - a sterile continuation of the campaign
50 They are certainly very competent experts in the psephological field but that is not the same thing as predicting correctly an election result beforehand .
53. Can you find out why you performed so impressively in Newport East. BTW on the other thread what are your contacts views on MG and coalition with Labour.
Thanks again Mark. Overall, a low-scoring score draw in the Lib Dem/Con marginals, methinks.
4 - Mark, further to your post about the disconnect between projected vote figures and seat gains/losses, have you any thoughts as to what happened? Is it a case of good targetting or is it some sort of anomaly in the way the figures are being worked out?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6629877.stm
Reid seems to have decided he’d rather succeed Gordon than challenge him…
53
‘They are certainly very competent experts in the psephological field but that is not the same thing as predicting correctly an election result beforehand’
By definition psephology is the study of trends and voting,and yet Thrasher was 50% out with his 2006 projections and 100% out this year.
Where is the competency there ? I would suggest that there is far more competency,expertise and accuracy from posters on PB.com posters,although they don’t have fancy titles in front of their names!
56 Paul I think there are a number of sometimes contradictory factors at work which may well include both your points but also incumbency of council leadership and unpopular decisions ( which is not the same as incompetency in running the council ) see Bournemouth or in the other direction Salisbury . Look also at the issue of fortnightly v weekly rubbish collections . Introduced by councils of various party control often opposed by the opposition party with parties taking the opposite view where they are in control/opposition in other councils and despite the green/recycling arguments put forward in its favour amost universally opposed by the voters . Undoubtedly this is because it is introduced to save money and not for recycling reasons .
59 - Local factors are clear in some places. Looking at Waverley a raft of independents standing in Farnham gained a lot of votes which may have accentuated the results.
59 Though I’d never vote for them, it was when those nice LDs first won Salisbury that they found sufficient in the budget to introduce weekly rubbish collections to the western villages. They didn’t get enough reward though I thank them every Monday morning. The threat of wheelie bins and fortnightly collections worries people, especially the weekenders and rural Wilts has plenty of those. Would have though weekly collections and re-cycling were possible (most of Europe manages that at least) especially as Landfill tax payments would drop.
Sky: Reid’s calculated snub to Brown…..
55. Really..some of these Lib Dem comments are starting to read like ‘Die Letzten Tage Im Fuhrerbunker’…
63 That’s better Yellow Peril . Your usual one line drivel .
44. The issues in North Wiltshire seem to have not affected the Tory performance so far, with them comprehensively winning the council from NOC this week
23 - I note that most of the NWDC wards that fall in the new Chippenham constituency were Liberal Democrat. One of the few Tory winners, in Corsham (my old stamping ground and usually Liberal, although there has beenconsiderabl expansion since my father was a Liberal councillor there), was called Hartless. You couldn’t make it up
28.
“the complacency of this is very encouraging.”
Yellow Peril’s complaceny is indeed very encouraging. Presumably he still thinks the Tories might win Northampton, Warrington South and/or Watford?
It would be a foolish man who would say that the Tories would never win another seat off the Lib Dems. It would be a rather more foolish man (probably Yellow Peril?) who would say that the present Tory seats are all invulnerable to Lib Dem attack on this recent evidence.
I haven’t had time to post much recently and this is not a plug for my blog but David Camerons promised return visit to Torbay on Friday didn’t go entirely according to plan:
http://marcuswood.blogspot.com
The point here is that he kept his word, and I wonder how many of us were quietly wondering if he would.
That is what TB has done to damage British Politics.
68 - a particularly green mode of transport too
I think the Labour party are definatly panicked by these locals.
Reid and Clarke saying they will not challange and Reid will step down. He obviously thinks the end is coming from going from a position he might challange to this in a few weeks. I think the Scottish result has major signifiacance in this decision. He relises he cannot get the top job and that really it is downhill all the way.
I actually think that Reid comes across a lot better ojn the telly has a sense of humour and is fairly affable!
Further Labour vote sleaze:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article1752293.ece
What a silly posting.
The Code of Conduct was designed for and by idiots who have no idea of how to deal with real postal votee fraud, so concentrate on trivia like this. Did anyone get coerced to vote other than how they wished?
What a silly posting.
The Code of Conduct was designed for and by idiots who have no idea of how to deal with real postal vote fraud, so concentrate on trivia like this. Did anyone get coerced to vote other than how they wished?