Professor Jane Green – ITV series on why local elections matter
Ahead of the country’s local elections on May 1, and the parliamentary by-election the same day, DPIR’s Professor of Political Science and British Politics, Jane Green, is presenting ITV’s ‘Local Election Matters’.
Jane will present a series of short explainer films that provide information on how to interpret the May local election results.
Watch Jane speak about this on ITV (some geographical restrictions may apply).
In the first episode, Jane gives four tips for interpreting what the local elections can and can’t tell us about the national political picture, which will be the first electoral test since last year’s general election:
- Location, Location, Location
This year, elections are only being held in 24 of England’s 317 councils. They’re not representative of the country as a whole.
There are areas where the Liberal Democrats may do well, but that’s not the whole country at large, and there are areas where Reform should also do well; but they likely would have done even better if the elections that were postponed were going ahead. So, remember that these results won’t be a great ‘snapshot’ of the whole country.
- People Vote Differently In Local Elections
Smaller parties (as a rule) tend to do better in local elections than they do in a general election where voters see themselves more as making a choice between potential governments. The Liberal Democrats did better in vote share in every local election of the last fifteen years than they did in the subsequent general election.
If the Liberal Democrats and Reform, and the Greens, do well in these local elections, they’ll want to argue that this shows they have national momentum, but it might not translate in a general election when they’re trying to win MPs. A bad night for the two largest parties may indeed by bad, but not as disastrous an omen for them as it first looks.
- A Lot Has Changed Since 2021
One key change now is that Reform are standing candidates in many more local councils than before and their support is up in the polls. They almost have to make gains, but we have to be careful how we interpret that.
The parties will be comparing gains and losses since the last local election vote in these areas in 2021, but we know a lot has changed since then, when the country was still coming out of the Covid Pandemic and the Conservatives were ahead of Labour. The Conservatives performed well in 2021, and are bound to face losses, while Reform is bound to make gains.
What really matters now is how the local elections show us whether the parties are doing better since July last year, when we last saw their real support in votes in the general election. That is how we could more plausibly say they’re support is actually growing. Otherwise, the results will more simply reflect the local election votes catching up with last year’s general election results.
- Vote Share > Seats Won
Looking at seats won and lost can be very confusing, and quite deceptive too. It’s important to look instead at the change in the share of vote since 2021 and whether the change is consistent with where the polls are now, or where the parties were last July.
We can expect gains in vote share for Reform, losses for the Conservatives, and perhaps some gains for the Greens and Liberal Democrats. But remember that what really matters is the direction of travel and how far the change in share has moved since 2021 and in comparison to last year in 2024. That will tell you whether the parties are doing better now or worse in their first test since last July: who is having a good set of election results or bad.
