by Stephen Fisher

Local elections are supposed to be about local matters, but the electoral fortunes of councillors and would-be councillors depend very heavily on the popularity of their parties nationally. So the outcome of this year’s local elections depend on how the current standing of the parties compares with four years ago when the seats up for election this year were last contested.

In the run up to the 2012 local elections Labour were polling above 40% with a solid 9 point lead over the Conservatives, in part because of the so-called omnishambles budget. Meanwhile the Liberal Democrats had slumped in the polls after the formation of the coalition government with little over 11%.

According to the average of the most recent polls from six companies, Labour have dropped since 2012 to 35% now, only narrowly ahead of the Conservatives who are on 34%. The Liberal Democrats have slid even further to just 7%. On this basis alone we should expect both Labour and the Lib Dems to lose substantial numbers of council seats while the Conservatives should make gains from their 3-point recovery. Continue reading Forecasting Local Election Seats 2016 →

Last year I published details of a basic model for forecasting the number of local council seats won from national opinion polls here. The basic idea is to estimate change in seats since the last time they were fought (four years ago) as a function of change in the polls over that time. Continue reading Locals seats forecast from national polls 2014 →