Analysing Local Election Results and Looking to the Future

Trinity Fellow in Politics Stephen Fisher has produced analysis for Prospect Magazine that puts the recent local election results into recent and historical context.

Professor Fisher looked at the performance of the Labour and Tory parties in this year’s local elections and compared them against electoral results in the baseline years of 2017 and 2018, as well as more recent years. His analysis suggests that Labour has bounced back in the last 12 months, and shown greatest improvement in communities that voted Leave. He notes: ‘In sum, not only has Labour bounced back a long way in the last 12 months, but it has actually bounced back further in communities that voted Leave. The continuing strength of the Tory vote in these areas has blinded some commentators to this, and further confusion is caused by reliance on a baseline from 2018, a point when the Brexit realignment still had a long way further to go. But insofar as Labour is concerned, that realignment may have now run its course, and appears to be starting to unwind—which could be as good for its prospects as the original realignment proved to be ruinous.’

Professor Fisher then looked at recent polling and electoral results and what they mean for the Conservative party – looking to history to provide perspective on how a the question of a change of prime minister raises strategic issues for the party. But he also notes: ‘With or without a change of leader, the biggest question of all is likely to be whether the Conservative Party can respond to the major issues of the day in a way that leads to election victory…

'Ted Heath and Jim Callaghan lost elections after struggling to manage the fallout from the oil shocks of the early and late 1970s. There are many differences between then and now. But the problems of energy and prices could prove to be just as unmanageable, and just as politically devastating for the government. If so, its current blues could prove less mid-term than terminal.’