03 May 2017

Early signs: five key indicators from the local election results for the general election outcome

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For the first time since 1992, the local elections and the general election are not occurring on the same occasion. Indeed this is the first election since 1987 that May local elections might be seen as an indicator of the general election outcome (except in 1987, as 1983, the Prime Minister did not call for the dissolution of Parliament until after the local election results were known). The consequence of this timing is that the votes being counted tomorrow will inevitably be assessed in the context of what they might mean for the 8 June contest. While this devalues local democracy somewhat, it is unavoidable. Particular attention will be paid to the calculation of what the national percentage of the vote would have been for each political party and how that would translate into a Parliament.

In fact, this is a largely futile exercise. The national vote figures extrapolated by early Friday will almost certainly have a gap between the Conservatives and Labour that is smaller than that being shown in the opinion polls, and in this instance it will be those polls rather than the theoretical share of the vote that should be deemed the more reliable. In macro-terms, the broad trend of the local elections taken overall will tell us something of value but the actual numbers derived will not.

Why not? A number of factors are significant here. First, turnout. If the past is anything to rely on, then the turnout at these local elections will be a lot lower – probably 20% to 25% lower – than will be witnessed at the general election. Those who choose to vote tomorrow (and it will almost surely be a minority of those who could cast a ballot) will fall disproportionately into two camps: those who almost always vote whenever they have the opportunity (who tend to be older and/or more affluent and hence somewhat more Conservative-inclined than the norm) and those who, for whatever cause, are more aggrieved or discontented at the moment (which creates a bias against the Government of the day in most circumstances). The ‘extra’ voters who do not head for the polling stations on 4 May but are seen there on 8 June will be different from either of these categories of fellow citizens.

The second element to keep in mind is that some people vote differently in local elections than they would be inclined to do in a general election. The main beneficiaries of this are Liberal Democrats, who always do better in local contests than they are performing in the national opinion polls at the time. This was true even in the nadir years for Nick Clegg and his supporters during the coalition when they were regularly under 10% in the national polls (as they ultimately were in 2015) but managed to perform somewhat better than that in the local election results of 2011-2014.

It is also the case that there are large parts of England and especially Wales where various collections of Independents do well in local elections but do not even stand, never mind win, at general elections. As a rule, most of those who defect to the Liberal Democrats or Independents for local elections are disproportionately likely to back the Conservative Party at a general election. For that reason, I am inclined to add up to 10 percentage points to whatever number the BBC/Sky claim to be their final national share of the vote based on the local elections results for their general election number.

Finally, there is geography. The vast majority of the country has local elections tomorrow. There is one very prominent exception and that is London. This matters not only because the capital city is very large (which it is) but because in recent years it has become quite distinct from the rest of the United Kingdom. The Labour Party did much better in London in 2015 than anywhere else (the few Conservative advances were at the expense of the Liberal Democrats in the south west of the city). Since then, the Labour candidate Sadiq Khan has been elected Mayor with a striking 57%-43% margin, and London voted Remain in the EU Referendum by a smashing 60%-40% majority. The absence of London in the local elections this time thus risks underestimating the true Labour vote.

Does this mean that the local elections are of little or no value in predicting the general election? No. One does, though, have to look at them carefully. Here are five potentially important indicators.

The Conservative vote for the Mayor of the West Midlands

If Theresa May is to achieve a substantially increased majority then she needs to win new votes in the right places. This is what makes the election for the Mayor of the West Midlands (Birmingham and its surrounding area) very interesting. Even before the general election was called it seemed as if the Conservatives would do quite well, in part because their candidate, Andy Street, an ex-Managing Director of John Lewis, is a high-profile figure. Despite this, the demographics of the region made it seem that he would be very fortunate to win. This remains the case but if he comes close or if he sneaks it this would be very significant as the West Midlands is home to lots of marginal Labour MPs.

The Labour vote in Wales

As BVCA Insight pointed out last week, the undeclared Labour strategy is about making the most of the strength of the party brand (and playing down the role of the leader) in an attempt to convince its core vote to come out on polling day and hence reduce the scale of losses to the Conservatives. If that approach does not work in a heartland like Wales then it might not succeed anywhere. One poll published recently suggested that the Conservatives were poised to defeat Labour by a large margin in the Principality (40% to 30% if this very surprising survey is correct) and win a majority of seats in Wales for the first time since the 1850s. The nearer the Labour vote in Wales is below 30% then it is more credible to conceive that the Conservatives could make serious gains as part of a landslide win.

The Liberal Democrat vote for the Mayor of the West of England

As again observed last week, the Liberal Democrats have a dilemma in where to distribute resources. Do they target seats that they once held but lost to the Conservatives? Others they lost to Labour in 2015? Or a different list entirely based on how strongly they supported Remain in the referendum? They should find some clues not only in their overall vote in the contest for the Mayor of the West of England (Bristol and its surrounding terrain) but also in their relative performance in urban Bristol, the suburbs of the city and the more rural (historically pro-Lib Dem but also anti-EU) areas around it.

The third category, by contrast, would be the 20-50 parliamentary seats (outside of Scotland) where the Remain vote was highest in the EU referendum last year. These might be worth a vigorous Lib Dem effort even if on paper the party is starting from third place after the 2015 election. These are an odd mixture of some quite wealthy Conservative held seats and others in poorer Labour terrain.

The scale of UKIP losses overall

UKIP is fighting to retain council seats in England which it won in 2013, its high point in domestic politics, when it secured the equivalent of 22% of the national vote and gained 145 councillors. If the national trend is accurate this would imply that they could lose 100 council seats or more in this election. If losses are of that sort of scale (or worse) then the party could be decimated on 8 June.

The SNP share of the vote in the Scottish council elections

Scotland is having the perfect dry run for the general election tomorrow. There are council elections in every parliamentary constituency and, unlike Wales, in most places there is no notable tradition of Independents performing particularly well in local elections. So, the SNP share of the vote tomorrow is a reasonably reliable signal of what it will be like five weeks later (allowing for the turnout issue). If it is 45% or over then Nicola Sturgeon will be confident on her prospects at the general election. If it were to fall below that then she would have cause to be concerned about defeats on polling day.

Tim Hames
Director General, BVCA


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