Thursday’s local elections almost inevitably produced a cacophony of information. That presented the parties with plenty of opportunity to cherry pick results that appeared to present their performance in a better light – thereby potentially distracting attention from less convincing performances.
If Reform had fought these local elections more widely, the picture might have looked even bleaker for the Conservatives
As the results gradually flowed in, the Conservatives pursued this strategy with vigour. They trumpeted their successful defence of the Tees Valley mayoralty. And they pointed out that Labour had failed to gain overall control of one of their target councils, Harlow. Unfortunately, that strategy came rather unstuck on Saturday evening when the results of the West Midlands mayoralty came in and the party’s standard bearer, Andy Street, lost out – albeit by the narrowest of margins.
There was, it seems, not so much to cherry pick after all.
In truth, despite the variety of contests and circumstances, the message for the Tories is much the same across the various and varied contests that took place on Thursday. On average, in the BBC’s sample of wards where detailed voting figures were collected, Conservative support was down by just over 11 points when compared with the local elections in 2021. In the mayoral contests outside London the average fall was 10.5 points. And in in the Police and Crime Commissioner elections in England, Conservative support was also down on average by 10.5 points.
Only in London was the fall in support less marked. The party’s vote was down by nearly five points in both the London Assembly votes, while in the mayoral contest the drop was just over two and a half points. Even so, this was still enough to ensure that the party’s share of the London constituency vote fell to a record low.
Meanwhile, the Conservative performance in the parts of the capital where the Ulez scheme was recently extended was only a little better than elsewhere. It seems that the issue may not have had as much resonance as it appeared after the party won last year’s Uxbridge by-election.
Still, it could perhaps have been worse. The fall since 2021 in the party’s support in the national polls, 19 points, is even higher than was recorded in most of the elections this week.
But the polls also reveal that the party is now losing more of its 2019 supporters to Reform than to Labour. In the limited number of council wards where a Reform candidate did appear on the ballot paper, Conservative support did fall on average by 19 points (while Reform themselves averaged 12 per cent). Meanwhile, the damage that Reform could potentially do to the party in a parliamentary election was illustrated in the Blackpool South by-election, in which Reform’s 17 per cent of the vote was a key reason why the Conservatives suffered their third biggest fall in support in post-war by-election history.
In short, if Reform had fought these local elections more widely, the picture might have looked even bleaker for the Conservatives. They have to hope that even if Reform does put up a candidate in every parliamentary constituency, as Richard Tice is determined to do, it will lack the foot soldiers on the ground needed to mount an effective campaign locally.
There are underlying patterns in the geography of the local council results that should cause particular concern in Conservative ranks too.
First, on average the fall in Conservative support since 2021 was higher (14 points) in wards the party was trying to defend than it was elsewhere (ten points).
Second, some voters’ apparent dislike of the party is so great that they are willing to vote tactically for whichever party seems best placed to defeat the local Conservative incumbent.
In wards where Labour started off second to the Conservatives, their support increased on average by nearly nine points, while the Liberal Democrats made hardly any advance at all. In contrast, in wards where the Liberal Democrats were previously in second place their vote was up by nearly six points, while Labour’s advance was a more modest two points.
At the moment, because of the geography of party support, Labour needs to be 14 points ahead of the Conservatives to gain a parliamentary majority of just one. If at the next election it changes in the way it did in these local elections, Sir Keir Starmer will find it easier to secure an overall majority.
Not everything in the garden was rosy for Labour. Rather than suggesting growing enthusiasm for the prospect of a Labour government, support for the party in the local council elections was actually down a point on last year. Outside London at least, the party’s stance on Gaza caused it considerable difficulty in areas with large numbers of Muslim voters. Meanwhile, strong performances by the Greens, who recorded what looks like their best local election performance yet, typically came disproportionately at Labour’s expense.
But the fact that other parties – but not the Conservatives – have found some chinks in Labour’s armour will not be much comfort to Rishi Sunak whenever he eventually decides to call the general election.
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