While some ask what local election results tell us about the state of the parties and prospects for the next general election, it is also important to consider how national party popularity affects the fortunes of candidates in local government elections. Local elections are often said to be about local issues but actually most of the changes over time in shares of council seats won the Conservatives, Labour and Liberal Democrats can be accounted for by changes the popularity of these parties at the national level. Continue reading What do the polls tell us about local election results?
Local Elections Vote Shares: the BBC PNS and Rallings & Thrasher NEV compared
After repeating the mantra that local elections are local, the overall performances of the main parties at local elections are often discussed by journalists and others. This commentary tends to focus on the numbers of seats and councils won and lost by each party. But these can be hard to interpret given the very different numbers of seats up for grabs each year and their different profiles at different points in the cycle. Continue reading Local Elections Vote Shares: the BBC PNS and Rallings & Thrasher NEV compared
US Elections 2012: Some initial thoughts on the results and polls
The big political story is no change. Obama is still the president, there looks like there will be very little change in the party composition of the Republican held House and Democrat led Senate. Given the polarisation of US parties at the moment, this seems to be a recipe for continued legislative gridlock. The last Congress was the least productive in over 120 years. Continue reading US Elections 2012: Some initial thoughts on the results and polls
English Local Elections 2012: Who won votes from whom?
This is quite hard to tell the pattern of vote switching from one party to another from the aggregate ward-level data alone because of the well known ecological inference problem, but some insights can be gleaned from the pattern of correlations in the changes in party shares. Continue reading English Local Elections 2012: Who won votes from whom?
Scottish Local Elections 2012
In yesterday’s Scottish local elections, both Labour and the SNP were up and the Tories and Lib Dems were down relative to when they were last run in 2007. Continue reading Scottish Local Elections 2012
