ENGLISH LOCAL ELECTION, MAYORAL, LONDON ASSEMBLY, ENGLAND + WALES PCC RESULTS, MAY 2024

This years local elections in England consisted of 107 English local councils, all members of the London Assembly, 11 directly elected Mayors , and 37 PCCs in England & Wales.  In addition, one Parliamentary by-Election took place in Blackpool South.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

LOCAL AUTHORITIES ROUND-UP

107 English councils held elections with more than 2,000 seats being contested. Some were for metropolitan boroughs such as Manchester city council and others for unitary authorities such as Bristol or Dorset.  The majority of these elections were last held in 2021 (delayed from 2020 due to Covid).  The Tories were expected to lose around 500 seats and in the end lost 474.  Labour were expected to gain 350 but fell short only gaining 186.  The Tory collapse occured but the anticipated Labour landslide failed to materialise.

(Tabulations differ in various sources.  These are based in direct comparison 

from who won in 2021 against who won now and do not take by-elections, 

change of allegiance etc that may have occurred in the interim into account)

Local Election Voting Patterns For These Councils 2016-2024



National Opinion Polling vs Actual Local Results  Comparing How Voters Say They
Intend To Vote In A General Election In Comparison To How they Vote in Local Elections

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

MAYORAL ELECTIONS ROUND-UP

No real surprises.  Sadiq Khan became Mayor of London for his third succesive term.  In the West Midlands, Labour won the seat my the narrowest of margins with one Labour source blaming the Gaza conflict, arguing that it was “the Middle East, not West Midlands” that had driven the vote and "the only winner was HAMAS".  Afterwards Labour sought to distance itself from the quote.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

LONDON ASSEMBLY ROUND-UP

The London Assembly consists of 25 seats.   Members of the London Assembly are elected through a combination of both first-past-the-post constituencies and closed list proportional representation. This system is commonly referred to as the Additional Member System (AMS). Fourteen members are elected in single member constituencies with the candidate receiving the largest number of votes becoming the Assembly Member for that constituency. An additional 11 members are also elected from the whole of London, with parties submitting lists of up to 25 candidates. For a party to be included, it needs to attain at least 5% of the vote across London. This process divides the remaining seats proportionally to the vote share of the parties with the use of the modified D'Hondt method allocating the seats. This system ensures overall proportionality with the 11 additional members being allocated in a corrective manner.   In other words,  the better you do at Constituency level, the worse you will do in the top-ups (hence why both Labour and the Lib Dems won a Constituency, but ended up no better off because they lost out in the Top-Ups.


The Result was:-

The new 2024 London Assembly is therefore:-

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

ENGLAND & WALES POLICE & CRIME COMMISSIONER (PCC)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

BLACKPOOL SOUTH PARLIAMENTARY BY-ELECTION

The by-election followed the resignation of incumbent Tory MP Scott Benton. Benton had been suspended for 35 days from the House of Commons after being caught in a newspaper sting operation offering lobbying services for payment. This triggered a recall petition, which had started, but was then terminated by Benton's resignation.  The by-election was won by Labour's Chris Webb.  I have included 2019's figures purely to illustrate the effects of low turn-outs and stay-at-home-voters on the final result.  2019 wasn't a particulalry high turn-out in Blackpool South at 56.8% as opposed to 67.3% nationally and was one of the lowest in the UK.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

HIGHLIGHTS

The Conservatives lost many council seats and suffered the worst defeat at a local election by a government since 1996. They took some solace from Ben Houchen winning re-election as Tees Valley Mayor and managing to hold the Labour target of Harlow Council by just one seat.

Labour won the newly-created mayoralties of East Midlands,  York and North Yorkshire  and took one of their key targets - West Midlands, by the thinnest of cat's whiskers.

The Liberal Democrats gained Tunbridge Wells Council and Dorset Council and for the first time in any round of local elections, ended up with more seats than the Tories.

Boris Johnson forgot his voter ID and in my opinion did so deliberately in order to get his name all over the media.  Certainly for most of the day every news channel repeated it and his name endlessly.

The Greens had their best ever local election result. But they failed by two seats to take control of main target of Bristol City Council from Labour.  The Green Party following the intervention of the government’s independent antisemitism advisor former-Labour MP now Lord John Mann, has since confirmed it is investigating one of their new councillors after he and his supporters were filmed shouting “Allahu Akbar!” and pledging that his win was “a win for the people of Gaza”.

Reform UK underperformed nationally but did win two seats on Havant Borough Council.  They also took 16.8% of the vote in Blackpool South Parliamentary by-Election, their best showing to date at that level.

Gorgeous George Galloway's The Workers Party of Britain won two seats in Rochdale, one in Manchester and one in Calderdale.   Anti-Low Traffic Neighbourhood Alliance won 3 seats in Oxford and Sandy Toksvig's Women's Equality Party won it's first seat at this level,  in Basingstoke.

The main talking point for strategists is the swing.   Across all elections the swing from Tory to Labour was only around 4.5% - way lower than the 8%+ that Labour need to win a majority in the forthcoming General Election suggesting the likely outcome will be a hung Pariament or a very very smal Labour majority. Voters are not behaving in the cold light of the polling booths as they say they will in the warm fuzziness of opinion polls.  It should also be remebered that turn-outs at these sorts of elections are always decidedly lower than a General Election, and at this level voters vote (or indeed don't vote) for different reasons.

Turn-out ranged from piss-poor to absolutely dire.  Which is normal.