Newsletter #35: Local Elections special

Analysis of the results — Is there any point to Reform running local councils, anyway? — Labour’s Runcorn and Local Elections postmortem

Good afternoon.

Later this week, we will have an international elections round-up, for Canada, Australia, Romania, and Albania (upcoming). However, today, we’re staying at home, with an analysis of the local elections, and what it all means for some of our ‘favourite’ political parties.

This newsletter’s agenda: Local election results (free); Is there any point to Reform running local councils, anyway? (paid); Labour’s Runcorn and Local Elections postmortem, figurative or literal (paid).

Local election results

Mayoral Elections

Greater Lincolnshire Mayoral Election

Projected Winner: Andrea Jenkyns (Reform UK), 3%/15%/15% projected margin

Actual Winner: Andrea Jenkyns (Reform UK), 15.2% actual margin

Full results: Reform 42%, Conservative 26.1%, Labour 12.3%, Lincolnshire Independents 8%, Green 6.1%, Liberal Democrat 5.5%

Most accurate pollster: YouGov, Findoutnow

As expected, former Conservative MP Andrea Jenkyns romped to victory for Reform UK in Lincolnshire. The Tories came in a distant second place, but together, Reform UK and the Tories won a huge 68% of the vote. The three left-wing parties (Labour, Liberal Democrats, Greens) won just 21% of the vote combined. Lincolnshire, as a number of outlets have noted, really is remarkably right-wing, completely out of line with almost anywhere else in the country, even when you try to control for the most obvious demographic characteristics of the area: The Economist recently wrote about this, but offered more description than explanation, so let us give it another try. Because in fact, once you look a bit more closely, Lincolnshire being so right-wing is actually more than explicable; there’s nothing mysterious about it.

As we noted in our seat preview for Boston and Skegness in 2024, large parts of East Lincolnshire — which is especially radically right-wing — is ‘partly a case of very specific resentment against agricultural immigration, and partly a bog-standard, poor seaside town… a perfect storm for right-wing populists’. But more broadly, Lincolnshire — east and west — is predominantly rural, with more farmers than most of the rest of the country, with obvious political consequences.

Perhaps most importantly, it’s extremely isolated, even for a rural area. It has bad transport links (both road and rail), very little tourism, and isn’t on the way to anywhere, meaning it’s very distant from the cultural milieu of London (or even the Home Counties). There are really no wealthy commuters settling here. In fact, some of the Lincolnshire constituencies may be the least visited in the entirety of England — ever heard of ‘South Holland and the Deepings’? For various reasons, such as Lincolnshire not being very pretty, it’s also undesirable for rich retirees.

The importance of the isolation is clear given that the only parts of the county that are less right-wing, aside from Lincoln itself, are the Stamford area, which is commutable to Cambridge and Leicester, and the Lincolnshire Wolds, the most picturesque part of the county which probably attracts a few internal migrants. Additionally, West Lincolnshire, which is less isolated than East Lincolnshire, is also generally less right-wing (though mostly in the sense of being more Tory than Reform).

Socioeconomically, a friend from there observes that ‘…it’s almost northern, but without the industry, only fishing’, meaning it ‘…never had any sort of proletarian labour movement’. This means that the Left, and Labour more particularly, are weak even for the sort of people who, if they were from elsewhere, might be inclined to vote for them for ancestral and/or socioeconomic reasons. There’s also only one proper university, and only one city with any real number of professionals living in it — Lincoln, which is also fairly small — even further insulating it from left-wing cultural change.

The losing candidates all fled the building in terror during Jenkyns’s victory speech, in which she said that refugees (except Ukrainians) should be put in tents, and mocked the ‘Lincolnshire Independent’ candidate’s South African accent. (Of course, the media neglected to tell people that this attack didn’t come out of nowhere: the South African claimed that Jenkyns, who grew up in Lincolnshire and even attended the University of Lincoln, was merely ‘parachuted in’.) A job well done…

Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Mayoral Election

Projected Winner: Paul Bristow (Conservative), 9%/7%/12%/4% projected margin

Actual Winner: Paul Bristow (Conservative)

Full results: Conservative 28.4%, Reform 23.4%, Labour 20.1%, Liberal Democrat 19.6%, Green 8.6%

Most accurate pollster: Findoutnow

In the only bright spot of the entire night for the Conservative Party, former Tory MP Paul Bristow won — as expected. The biggest surprise here was the performance of Reform, who came a very strong second to the Tories. Many, though not all, of these votes seem to have come at Bristow’s expense, as his margin was smaller than expected and the Tory vote share declined significantly since last time. Together, the Tories and Reform won roughly 109,000 votes; this compared to roughly 101,000 for the combined left, including the Liberal Democrats.

The city of Cambridge itself is, as you’d expect, completely hopeless for the Right. The thoroughly unpleasant Peterborough, where Bristow lost his seat to Labour by just 118 votes in 2024, partly thanks to a strong Reform UK performance, is rather different.

But what about the rest of the county? Large parts of Cambridgeshire — basically, the nicest parts of Cambridgeshire — are very friendly to the Liberal Democrats. The Liberal Democrats won South Cambridgeshire with a majority of over 10,000 in 2024, St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire with a majority of over 4,000, and just barely won Ely and East Cambridgeshire also. Reform underperformed in these areas — given that they (until recently) have been considered solidly Tory — winning just 12.3%, 8.9%, and 10.7% of the vote respectively in 2024. The Tories have probably been just about kept above water in these parts of Cambridgeshire thanks to ULEZ; if it wasn’t for ULEZ, I imagine it would be even more friendly to the Liberal Democrats than it already is.

North Cambridgeshire, however, is a different story. It is this that makes Cambridgeshire as a whole rather different from Oxfordshire, which is really the Liberal Democrat paradise. Some parts of North Cambridgeshire are actually somewhat more like Lincolnshire than the Cambridgeshire of popular imagination. The Tories held North East Cambridgeshire with a majority of over 7,000, and Reform UK came in strong second place; meanwhile, Labour won North West Cambridgeshire with a tiny majority of 39, thanks to a split right-wing vote and one of the least popular local Tory MPs in the entire country (there was clearly a big personal vote against him here, given that far less safe seats were held elsewhere).

Presumably, it was in these areas that Reform did better — though I don’t think there is any data on voting patterns by region in these elections, so we can’t know for sure.

West of England Mayoral Election

Projected Winner: Toss-up

Actual Winner: Helen Godwin (Labour), 2.9% actual margin

Full results: Labour 25.0%, Reform 22.1%, Green 20.0%, Tory 16.6%, Liberal Democrat 14.0%, Independent 2.3%

Most accurate pollster: None (More in Common got the right winner, but their projected vote shares were completely wrong)

The West of England Mayoral Election, as we noted in the last newsletter, gives us a taste of what three-way, four-way, and — as it was here — even five-way splits in a First Past the Post system look like. The only thing that prevented it from becoming even more absurd was the relatively poor performance of the Liberal Democrats here. This should be a rather disappointing result for them, though it may be a consequence of tactical voting (as few people thought the Liberal Democrats actually had a chance, with most left-wingers assuming it was a battle between Labour and the Greens, and right-wingers voting non-tactically for whoever they preferred).

It would be good for people to get used to such results. Extremely divided elections can become very unpredictable, as even small polling misses can produce completely unexpected results. We suggested that there was a small chance that the Tories could win here, as they were only two points out on one poll. This was on the assumption that this was not a place that was very friendly to Reform. On this, we were completely wrong: instead, it was Reform who would overperform, mostly at the expense of the Tories, who underperformed.

The ‘West of England’ — a rather uninformative name — includes Bristol, Bath, and certain parts of Gloucestershire and Somerset. All three polls were off, but all in different ways. YouGov, however, was the least accurate, despite being on the money for Lincolnshire and for Hull. Here, they predicted 27% vote share for the Greens, who actually got 20%. This election contains an odd mix of places with rather different politics, which may give rise to difficulties in sampling.

Fortunately, here, we actually have results by local authority available. In Bath and North East Somerset, the Liberal Democrats won (23%), followed by Labour, the Tories, and Reform, all neck-and-neck on roughly 20%, with the Greens on behind on 17% — a true five-way race. In Bristol, Labour (30%) beat out the Greens (28%) just barely. Banks won 17% of the vote, presumably almost entirely in Bristol’s much-neglected white working class areas. Finally, in South Gloucestershire, Reform were way ahead on 30%, followed by the Tories on 22%, giving a majority of the vote to the Right. This is despite the council there currently being a Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition.

Hull and East Yorkshire Mayoral Election

Projected Winner: Luke Campbell (Reform UK), 13%/3%/19% projected margin

Actual Winner: Luke Campbell (Reform UK), 8.1% margin

Full results: Reform 35.8%, Liberal Democrat 27.7%, Conservative 15.8%, Labour 13.7%, Green 3.7%, Yorkshire 3.2%

Most accurate pollster: YouGov were closest (but all three substantially underestimated the Liberal Democrats)

The former boxer Luke Campbell certainly seemed favoured to win here, though I must confess I was a little surprised by the margin — even though it was actually lower than two of the forecasts. Campbell’s campaign really had very few resources put into it, making Reform’s win all the more impressive. (Though admittedly, Reform’s ground game, both at the door and online, across the country seems mediocre. Even in Runcorn, they took out very few adverts, which were poorly targeted.)

The real surprise was the strong performance of the Liberal Democrats in an area that, to put it politely, is not exactly their home turf. None of the three pollsters came even close to predicting their impressive 27.7% vote share.

Though perhaps this shouldn’t have come as such a surprise: the Liberal Democrats control Hull City Council, and their leader was the Liberal Democrat candidate here. In fact, the Council has traded hands between Labour and the Liberal Democrats for the last twenty years. What makes this even more strange is how pro-Brexit this area was, and how uncompetitive the Liberal Democrats are in General Elections, coming fourth in 2019 and a distant third in 2024. I don’t really have much of an explanation for this; presumably, it’s just a quirk of local politics, and the Liberal Democrats here aren’t really representative of the Liberal Democrats nationally.

In addition to the above, Labour very narrowly won the Doncaster and the North Tyneside mayoral elections. In both, Reform were in a close second place.

Council Elections

Vote share: Reform UK (30%), Labour (20%), Liberal Democrats (17%), Conservative (15%), Green (11%).

Most accurate pollster: None. All overestimated the Tories and Labour, and underestimated Reform and the Liberal Democrats.

As expected, this was a Tory rout (-674), in their worst ever performance outside of a European election, but at least they could try to (unconvincingly) console themselves that this was after an unsustainable landslide. In the end, Reform (+677) did better than they possibly could have hoped for, with strong performances up and down the country. Few people expected Labour to do nearly as badly as they did (-187), and from a very low-water mark indeed. In fact, because of how poorly they did last time — the Tory landslide of 2021 — many expected them to roughly stand still, or maybe even gain seats, in spite of their dismal polling. That they failed to achieve even this is remarkable. The Liberal Democrats (+163) performed somewhat better than expected. But this — in my view — is, on balance, still a bit disappointing from their perspective, given the much greater than expected collapse of their main rivals. The Greens were a total damp squib (+44), given the rhetoric we’ve been hearing in the last few weeks.

Kent County Council, eternally Tory, saw the Conservative Party annihilated, falling from 62 councillors to a pitiful 5, all to Reform’s benefit. Meanwhile, at the opposite end of the country, in County Durham, Reform gained 65 councillors. Better yet for Reform, these were at the expense of lots of different parties: Labour (-38), Conservative (-15), and independents (-14). Meanwhile, in Lancashire, Reform gained 53 councillors; here, in yet another catastrophic performance for the two traditional parties, the Tories lost 40 councillors and Labour lost 27. Reform’s excellent performance in different circumstances summed up these local elections very well.

If it wasn’t for Shropshire, which peskily went Liberal Democrat, there would have been a solid teal line across the Midlands, with Lincolnshire (Reform +44, Tory -40), Nottinghamshire (Reform +40, Tory -19, Labour -10), Derbyshire (Reform +42, Tory -33, Labour -11), and Staffordshire (Reform +49, Tory -46) all falling to the insurgents. Additionally, Reform won control of North Northamptonshire and West Northamptonshire.

The Tories failed to defend a single council, let alone win one. Failed defences included Devon (-32 councillors), Worcestershire (-33), Warwickshire (-33), Leicestershire (-27), Hertfordshire (-24), and Shropshire (-38, where the Liberal Democrats won outright). They also lost 40 councillors in Cornwall (which remained NOC).

At a glance, the Tories fared very marginally — very marginally — better in places where the main competition was the Liberal Democrats (i.e., in the south with the exception of Kent), rather than Reform UK, though where both were a threat, the latter could act as spoiler (as occurred in Shropshire). For instance, in Cambridgeshire, where the Tories won the mayoral election, they fell from 28 to 10 seats, but this was enough to give the Liberal Democrats only a majority of only one seat. In Oxfordshire, they lost 15 seats of their 25, but once again, they did well enough to prevent the Liberal Democrats from building a particularly strong majority. (And to repeat our analysis above, it’s notable that Reform won 10 councillors in Cambridgeshire, but just 1 in Oxfordshire.) In Wiltshire, they lost 24 seats, but succeeded in stopping the Liberal Democrats taking control.

The best Tory performance was in Northumberland, where they lost only 10 seats. They lost control of the council (now NOC), but Reform — by contrast — gained 26 seats, meaning they won more from Labour than from the Tories, which must have been a nice change. Conversely, Reform UK’s only somewhat ‘bad’ performances, by this night’s lofty standards, were in Buckinghamshire, where they only won 3 seats, despite the Tories being routed (-29), and in Oxfordshire, where they won only 1 seat.

Is there any point to Reform running local councils, anyway?