The Conservatives are on course to lose more than 800 council seats in next month’s local elections in results that, if repeated at the next general election, would see Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, become prime minister.
Pollsters Electoral Calculus and Find Out Now are forecasting a five per cent swing from the Tories to Labour at the local elections in England and Wales on May 5.
If replicated at a general election, the figures suggest Labour would emerge as the largest party in Parliament, 15 MPs short of an overall majority and probably reliant on a power-sharing deal with the SNP to form a government.
The polling firms asked about the voting intentions of more than 12,000 people in 201 district and unitary councils between April 4 and April 8. The sample was then weighted by gender, age, social class and past voting pattern.
Electoral Calculus and Find Out Now found the Tories are likely to lose 810 seats – with their wards falling from 1,965 to 1,155 – while Labour will gain 835, giving the party 3,722 predicted wards.
Prized Tory councils including Wandsworth – a totemic authority for the party as an early adopter of Thatcherite policies of council house sales and privatisation of street cleaning and refuse collection – are forecast to be taken by Labour.
As well as the south-west London council, the Tories are expected to lose Barnet, Harlow, Newcastle-under-Lyme, Southampton and Thurrock.
Forecast Labour gains include Blaenau Gwent, Bolton, Bridgend and Burnley as well as Crawley, Flintshire, Milton Keynes, Newcastle-under-Lyme and Plymouth. The Liberal Democrats are forecast to lose 13 council seats, leaving the party with 447 wards, and Plaid Cymru to gain 64, taking it to 190.
Martin Baxter, the Electoral Calculus founder, said: “If the actual results are similar to our predictions, then Boris Johnson will be spared new backbench pressure to unseat him.
“Although the Conservatives will lose some ground in these local elections, it doesn’t look like a catastrophic defeat and that is a good result for them after their poor poll ratings post-‘partygate’.”
However, the polling was carried out before Scotland Yard’s decision to fine Mr Johnson, his wife Carrie and Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor, for attending an illegal party during one of the Covid lockdowns.
Mr Baxter said Labour still faced the challenge of generating any real “enthusiasm” among voters compared with the surge away from the Tories that benefited Tony Blair’s Labour in the mid-1990s.
He told the Chopper’s Politics Podcast, which you can listen to on the audio player at the top of this article: “If you can cast your mind back to Tony Blair, he generated a lot of enthusiasm at the time. People were encouraged to vote for him.
“Keir Starmer has not yet shown that. There’s not yet been electoral victories without a proven enthusiasm by the British public to get Labour in and the Conservatives out.”
Mr Baxter said the forecast local election results, if replicated at the general election expected to take place in May 2024, would see Labour emerge as the largest party.
He described this as “a central forecast” and “quite a likely outcome”, adding: “We’d probably be looking at a Labour minority government that might be supported by the Lib Dems if they’re lucky. But it would probably be more likely to lead to SNP support. And obviously, the price of that SNP support would probably be a second independence referendum.”
However, Mr Baxter warned that a lot could change, saying: “A Labour minority government is currently where we are – but remember, we are mid-term. Things may well change in the next two years.”
“Politics has been changing quite quickly in the last two years, so we will have to wait and see. But yes, it is literally true that anything could happen in the next general election.”
800 council seats lost and 800 gained by Labour would be even bigger than anything Milliband ever achieved in his local elections, and would be the highest local election performance by a Labour leader since Blair in 1995 when he gained over 1,000 councils.
Find it funny how the article claims this wouldn’t be a catastrophic defeat – a change of this scale would very much be catastrophic.
And it’s also funny how the article thinks Labour would strike a deal with the SNP. It’s been pretty obvious for a while that’ll never happen and instead it’ll be the Lib Dems who strike a deal.
If I’ve learnt anything from any election in the last 15 years it’s don’t have any hopes or optimism based on polls – funnily enough, this is a definite area where experts know nothing. Local elections are a freebie to give a little slap on the wrist but when the crunch comes the conservatives will crush.
This would make me very happy so unlikely to happen.
There are a lot of people who can’t wait that long.
Torygraph article – what’s their agenda here? Rally up behind Boris the new travel agent?
This article wasn’t written to hype up Labour voters, it was written to scare Conservative voters to not be complacent about the upcoming elections. With the absolutely dire situation we’ve found ourselves in with the government, I’d say they’re worried about voters who normally vote for the Conservatives not turning up – gotta scare them with the potential of Labour taking over.
Good bye, BOJO. What public school elitist twat will con the voters next?
It is what it is. Time will tell if Labour can clean up this mess and at least restore some cordial relationship with Europe. It will be someone who will be in charge who is boring but clearly competent and has had a real job. People are clearly keeping tabs these days. No spin, distraction, misinformation will obscure the greater picture. The results of the hypocrisy is evident but has been more intense the last few weeks. The only worrying thing is if Labour falter in the next decade the Conservatives will be stuck with delivering brexit making them unelectable for many years to come so who will be the opposing emerging parties to Labour?
Never trust the fucking polls. That there is the complacency that leads to the devil.
Meh, the Tories will find some way to fail upwards again by then.
Personally my view is that the tories and their allied media will not go on the same kind of anti-Labour offensive at the next election. They’ve already ran a few little “anti semitism is dealt with” stories to set the scene for Labour to not be dragged down by those smears next time.
They will “allow” Labour to have a better chance of winning so either…
A) Labour win and the next 10 years of awful living standards that are already guaranteed, will be blamed on labour. So the tories can come in after, for another period of cleaning up for themselves and their pals.
B) tories still win, and they can claim the public accept the living standards and it isn’t the tories fault at all.
Every election that rolls around I’ve always thought “Tories won’t win this one
.. look at what they’ve done” and I dillligently wander to the polls and encourage everyone else to do so too.
Every time I’ve ever voted I’ve been surprised that actually… Tories got in again.
I think there’s a danger that reddit along with people irl live in echo chambers.
2024 is a long time away. 2020 is as far away now as 2024 is. A lot has happened in the last 2 year’s… So much so I dont even remember it all. What hope is there that people will realistically remember the last 4 years in 2024? Hindsight has a way of whitewashing the suffering people endured and rose tinting the good stuff.
While I will absolutely go out and vote, I wouldn’t take this piece as being in any way meaningful.
Looking forward for the swap from blob job the corrupt clown to Keith the sentient block of spam. Can’t wait for literally nothing to change.
Was this written by the same people who thought Labour would win the last election?
Just don’t let Stamer eat a bacon sandwich and we might have a chance
This is pitch rolling by The Telegraph.
The council seats up for election are mostly in places the Tories haven’t done very well previously, so it’s unlikely they’re going to lose that many, and when they don’t lose that many, it will be used to show Johnson is right to stay, and it being a disappointing night for Labour.
Blatant Torygraphism. Scare tory voters out of their seats and into the polling station.
Fucking cunts.
That was careless of them…obvious with Johnson in charge of seating, but careless.
Lol, polls are just copium, a news agency will ask around it’s own office, and suprise suprise, they all support the agency’s bias! Mainstream news lost touch with normal people a long time ago.
No f*cking wonder! The Conservatives have ruined The UK – Home and Internationally!
A lot of Scots just want the hell out of this cesspool. I can hope
A man who can’t define what a woman is can never and should never become PM.
2024 is still two years away and the parties have not even started campaigning yet. The Tories could lost a lot of council seats and set their PR teams into overdrive as a result, they will know they have plenty of time to regain lost ground and will spare no expense in doing so.
24 comments
The Conservatives are on course to lose more than 800 council seats in next month’s local elections in results that, if repeated at the next general election, would see Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, become prime minister.
Pollsters Electoral Calculus and Find Out Now are forecasting a five per cent swing from the Tories to Labour at the local elections in England and Wales on May 5.
If replicated at a general election, the figures suggest Labour would emerge as the largest party in Parliament, 15 MPs short of an overall majority and probably reliant on a power-sharing deal with the SNP to form a government.
The polling firms asked about the voting intentions of more than 12,000 people in 201 district and unitary councils between April 4 and April 8. The sample was then weighted by gender, age, social class and past voting pattern.
Electoral Calculus and Find Out Now found the Tories are likely to lose 810 seats – with their wards falling from 1,965 to 1,155 – while Labour will gain 835, giving the party 3,722 predicted wards.
Prized Tory councils including Wandsworth – a totemic authority for the party as an early adopter of Thatcherite policies of council house sales and privatisation of street cleaning and refuse collection – are forecast to be taken by Labour.
As well as the south-west London council, the Tories are expected to lose Barnet, Harlow, Newcastle-under-Lyme, Southampton and Thurrock.
Forecast Labour gains include Blaenau Gwent, Bolton, Bridgend and Burnley as well as Crawley, Flintshire, Milton Keynes, Newcastle-under-Lyme and Plymouth. The Liberal Democrats are forecast to lose 13 council seats, leaving the party with 447 wards, and Plaid Cymru to gain 64, taking it to 190.
Martin Baxter, the Electoral Calculus founder, said: “If the actual results are similar to our predictions, then Boris Johnson will be spared new backbench pressure to unseat him.
“Although the Conservatives will lose some ground in these local elections, it doesn’t look like a catastrophic defeat and that is a good result for them after their poor poll ratings post-‘partygate’.”
However, the polling was carried out before Scotland Yard’s decision to fine Mr Johnson, his wife Carrie and Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor, for attending an illegal party during one of the Covid lockdowns.
Mr Baxter said Labour still faced the challenge of generating any real “enthusiasm” among voters compared with the surge away from the Tories that benefited Tony Blair’s Labour in the mid-1990s.
He told the Chopper’s Politics Podcast, which you can listen to on the audio player at the top of this article: “If you can cast your mind back to Tony Blair, he generated a lot of enthusiasm at the time. People were encouraged to vote for him.
“Keir Starmer has not yet shown that. There’s not yet been electoral victories without a proven enthusiasm by the British public to get Labour in and the Conservatives out.”
Mr Baxter said the forecast local election results, if replicated at the general election expected to take place in May 2024, would see Labour emerge as the largest party.
He described this as “a central forecast” and “quite a likely outcome”, adding: “We’d probably be looking at a Labour minority government that might be supported by the Lib Dems if they’re lucky. But it would probably be more likely to lead to SNP support. And obviously, the price of that SNP support would probably be a second independence referendum.”
However, Mr Baxter warned that a lot could change, saying: “A Labour minority government is currently where we are – but remember, we are mid-term. Things may well change in the next two years.”
“Politics has been changing quite quickly in the last two years, so we will have to wait and see. But yes, it is literally true that anything could happen in the next general election.”
800 council seats lost and 800 gained by Labour would be even bigger than anything Milliband ever achieved in his local elections, and would be the highest local election performance by a Labour leader since Blair in 1995 when he gained over 1,000 councils.
Find it funny how the article claims this wouldn’t be a catastrophic defeat – a change of this scale would very much be catastrophic.
And it’s also funny how the article thinks Labour would strike a deal with the SNP. It’s been pretty obvious for a while that’ll never happen and instead it’ll be the Lib Dems who strike a deal.
If I’ve learnt anything from any election in the last 15 years it’s don’t have any hopes or optimism based on polls – funnily enough, this is a definite area where experts know nothing. Local elections are a freebie to give a little slap on the wrist but when the crunch comes the conservatives will crush.
This would make me very happy so unlikely to happen.
There are a lot of people who can’t wait that long.
Torygraph article – what’s their agenda here? Rally up behind Boris the new travel agent?
This article wasn’t written to hype up Labour voters, it was written to scare Conservative voters to not be complacent about the upcoming elections. With the absolutely dire situation we’ve found ourselves in with the government, I’d say they’re worried about voters who normally vote for the Conservatives not turning up – gotta scare them with the potential of Labour taking over.
Good bye, BOJO. What public school elitist twat will con the voters next?
It is what it is. Time will tell if Labour can clean up this mess and at least restore some cordial relationship with Europe. It will be someone who will be in charge who is boring but clearly competent and has had a real job. People are clearly keeping tabs these days. No spin, distraction, misinformation will obscure the greater picture. The results of the hypocrisy is evident but has been more intense the last few weeks. The only worrying thing is if Labour falter in the next decade the Conservatives will be stuck with delivering brexit making them unelectable for many years to come so who will be the opposing emerging parties to Labour?
Never trust the fucking polls. That there is the complacency that leads to the devil.
Meh, the Tories will find some way to fail upwards again by then.
Personally my view is that the tories and their allied media will not go on the same kind of anti-Labour offensive at the next election. They’ve already ran a few little “anti semitism is dealt with” stories to set the scene for Labour to not be dragged down by those smears next time.
They will “allow” Labour to have a better chance of winning so either…
A) Labour win and the next 10 years of awful living standards that are already guaranteed, will be blamed on labour. So the tories can come in after, for another period of cleaning up for themselves and their pals.
B) tories still win, and they can claim the public accept the living standards and it isn’t the tories fault at all.
Every election that rolls around I’ve always thought “Tories won’t win this one
.. look at what they’ve done” and I dillligently wander to the polls and encourage everyone else to do so too.
Every time I’ve ever voted I’ve been surprised that actually… Tories got in again.
I think there’s a danger that reddit along with people irl live in echo chambers.
2024 is a long time away. 2020 is as far away now as 2024 is. A lot has happened in the last 2 year’s… So much so I dont even remember it all. What hope is there that people will realistically remember the last 4 years in 2024? Hindsight has a way of whitewashing the suffering people endured and rose tinting the good stuff.
While I will absolutely go out and vote, I wouldn’t take this piece as being in any way meaningful.
Looking forward for the swap from blob job the corrupt clown to Keith the sentient block of spam. Can’t wait for literally nothing to change.
Was this written by the same people who thought Labour would win the last election?
Just don’t let Stamer eat a bacon sandwich and we might have a chance
This is pitch rolling by The Telegraph.
The council seats up for election are mostly in places the Tories haven’t done very well previously, so it’s unlikely they’re going to lose that many, and when they don’t lose that many, it will be used to show Johnson is right to stay, and it being a disappointing night for Labour.
Blatant Torygraphism. Scare tory voters out of their seats and into the polling station.
Fucking cunts.
That was careless of them…obvious with Johnson in charge of seating, but careless.
Lol, polls are just copium, a news agency will ask around it’s own office, and suprise suprise, they all support the agency’s bias! Mainstream news lost touch with normal people a long time ago.
No f*cking wonder! The Conservatives have ruined The UK – Home and Internationally!
A lot of Scots just want the hell out of this cesspool. I can hope
A man who can’t define what a woman is can never and should never become PM.
2024 is still two years away and the parties have not even started campaigning yet. The Tories could lost a lot of council seats and set their PR teams into overdrive as a result, they will know they have plenty of time to regain lost ground and will spare no expense in doing so.