Local elections: did the poll get it right?

In March HOT wrote about how this year’s cancelled local elections in East Sussex might have turned out based on the results of an Electoral Calculus poll for the Telegraph. As some scepticism was expressed about the accuracy of such a poll, we also promised to check how well the results matched the poll predictions. Text by Nick Terdre, research and graphics by Russell Hall.

At the previous elections, in May 2021, the Conservatives enjoyed great success, buoyed by the development of the Covid vaccines. In the 23 local authorities where elections were held this year – mostly county councils with large rural populations – they ended up with 993 councillors, miles ahead of the competition: Labour with 285, the Liberal Democrats 207, Independents 109 and the Greens 35. Reform had none.

The political situation since then has changed dramatically, support for the Tories having slumped, most of it moving to Reform, and Labour also lacking popularity only 10 months after sweeping the board in the general election. Starting from zero seats Reform won 677 while the Tories lost 674 to end up with 319 and Labour 187 to settle on 98.

The Lib Dems finished with 370, up 163, and the Greens with 73, up 44. The number of seats held by independents fell by 20 to 89.

Reform took control of 10 councils and the Lib Dems of three, leaving the other 10 under no overall control. Both Conservatives and Labour lost control of the councils they had previously run. Reform also narrowly won the Runcorn & Helsby by-election, overcoming a Labour majority of almost 14,700.

The outcome was somewhat different in the six areas where mayoral elections were held. Although Reform won two which were electing mayors for the first time, Labour held three and the Conservatives won one from Labour.

So overall the major winner was Reform, to the extent that its leader, Nigel Farage, has claimed it spells the end of the Conservative Party.

Catching trends

So how well did the outcome match what respondents told the Electoral Calculus poll for which fieldwork was carried out from 1 to 10 March? The responses, which were analysed with the multilevel regression and post-stratification (MRP) technique which allows an estimated result to be given for each local authority, caught the trend towards Reform and away from the Tories but underestimated the strength of both.

Reform’s vote share was 6% higher, and its number of seats gained 203 greater, than the poll indicated. By comparison the Conservatives’s vote share was 3% lower, and its seats losses 229 more, than the poll suggested.

The poll also overestimated Labour’s vote share by 6% and number of seats won by 154. The Liberal Democrat vote share was underestimated by a mere 1% but the number of seats it would gain was overestimated by 107. On the other hand the Greens’ support was underestimated by 3% and its seat gains by 52.

“We were broadly happy with the results of our polling,” the Electoral Calculus CEO Martin Baxter, told HOT. “We polled six weeks before polling day, and correctly said that Reform would win hundreds of seats and would be the largest party in many councils. We also said that the Greens would not do very well and would get less than 100 seats.

”That all came out right.

”Reform over-performed a bit relative to our prediction, as did the other minor parties, at the expense of Labour and the Conservatives.

”We put a considerable effort into predicting minor parties and were quite successful at that at the general election last year. Local council elections are difficult because of the low turnout, but we were overall pleased with our predictions, even though not every seat can be predicted correctly.”

Overall the poll had 67% of seat calls by council and party correct. That seems pretty good given that polling took place up to two months before the elections, and other opinion polls in the interim showed Reform’s lead over the Tories increasing from 3% to 9%.

Kent in the spotlight

So how did the elections pan out in Kent, one of our closest neighbours whose county council also applied to join the Devolution Priority Programme but were turned down?

Of 81 seats, Reform won 57, followed at a distance by the Lib Dems (12), Conservatives and Greens five each, and Labour (and Cooperative Party) two.

Reform’s vote share was 37%, up from 0.4% in 2021. The Lib Dems vote share was also slightly up, 11.8% against 11.1% four years ago, but all other parties lost ground: Tories 21.6%, down from 49%, and Labour 13.1% from 20.4%, and the Greens slightly, to 13.7% from 14%.

Again the Electoral Calculus poll underestimated many of the shifts, for example, putting Reform’s vote share at 48.8% and number of seats won at 41, but it called 68.3% of seats correctly, and the same proviso mentioned above of course applies.

And how might the election have played out in East Sussex had it been held? Applying the vote shares across the 23 councils where elections took place to the 50 ESCC seats, results would have been as follows: Reform 21, Tories 10, Lib Dems 11, Labour three, Greens two and independents three.

The Electoral Calculus poll, which was also carried out in East Sussex, indicated the following division of seats: Reform 9, Lib Dems 19, Tories 9, Labour 4, Greens 3 and independents 5. So Reform would probably have done a lot better, and the Lib Dems a lot worse, while there would have been  little change for the other parties.

So was Green county councillor Johnny Denis right to tell HOT that “MRP is notoriously poor at predicting local election results” and “Had the elections gone ahead we would have expected to increase our number of councillors to 12-14, the Tories to lose their base and for the administration to have been a LibDem led council with Green and possibly Labour support”?

When asked if he had any comment for this article, Denis replied: “Only that we know that the number of Green Councillors grew again across England – over 890 and an increase of 44.” (The total number of Green councillors is now 859 according to the party website.)

Nationally, while overshadowed by Reform, the Greens and the Lib Dems both increased their seats, by 44 and 163 respectively.

There were however pockets where Reform had little impact. In Oxfordshire, previously under no overall control, the Lib Dems took over the council winning 36 of the 69 seats. Labour won 12 seats, the Tories 10 and the Greens seven. Independents and others won three and Reform only one.

But this is an area which in 2016 voted 70% to stay in the EU, and as poll pundit Sir John Curtice commented on the recent elections, “Brexit is still an important fault line.” Kent, along with many other councils, stands on the other side of that fault line.

Skewed results

The elections however provide a striking example of the skewed results which the first-past-the-post (FTFP) system can deliver. As the Electoral Reform Society pointed out, in Staffordshire Reform won 41% of the vote but 79% of the seats, while in Shropshire the Lib Dems pocketed 57% of the seats with just a 34% vote share.

The West of England mayoralty was won by Labour with just a quarter of the votes. Mayoral elections were changed from the supplementary vote system to FPTP by the Conservative government with effect from May 2023.

And vote share of course is calculated on votes cast by the electors who turned out – in these elections about one third, as usual. In Kent the turnout was 33.4%, so Reform’s 37% vote share represents 12.4% of electors. It’s not the party’s fault that so few bother to vote, but it says something about the state of the country’s politics that so many electors are apathetic.

Turnout in Kent was down just 0.2% on 2021, but fell substantially in some of the larger inland towns – in Tunbridge Wells, where the Lib Dems gained all five seats from the Tories, it was down 8.4%. However, it was up in areas where Reform did well. In Ashford, where Reform got a clean sweep of all six seats, it was up 4%, and in Romney Marsh, where Reform won its second highest vote share across all 23 council elections at 63.6%, it was up 7.1%. It seems people who might otherwise not have voted turned out for Reform but not for the other parties.

Even in last year’s general election, turnout was 59.7%, so four in 10 electors did not vote. That election gave Labour 63% of parliamentary seats on the basis of 34% of the vote. Putting it another way, the wishes of 66% of voters were rejected.

End of two-party politics?

It may be, as various commentators have suggested, and Farage too, that these elections mark the end of two-party politics, in which central government is in the hands of either the Tories or Labour. Now there are, counting the Greens, five parties with electoral clout, and the argument that some form of proportional representation (PR) is needed to ensure that elected bodies reflect the wishes of the majority of voters is growing stronger.

As Make Votes Matter, one of several groups campaigning to end FPTP,  said, “Our voting system cannot deal with multi-party politics and it is trying to keep a binary political culture on life support against the wishes of the public.

“The government must take the opportunity to give all voters an equal say who governs them. First Past the Post and its chaos must end.”

Reform has called for PR in the past; whether it is still in favour is unknown –  HOT has asked the question.

 

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