The winner takes it all

Well with the Bristol elections over for 2 years and the dust settled from the emotion around the elections who were the big winners in Bristol.

Labour

Labour gained 3 seats from the 2007 election (elections are fought on a 4 yearly cycle) and regained one seat which was lost in a by-election.  These were reasonable results but in no way matched the results in the Northern cities where Labour swept the board.  The swing to Labour was from the lib dems was 4% only half that achieved nationally. All Labour’s gains were at the expense of the Lib Dems and failed to win any seats from the Tories.

Labour will feel that they have momentum and are winning seats again but have failed to make a big enough impact to take control of the council over a four year cycle – If all the seats had been up Labour would have won around 32-34 seats just short of taking control.

Lib Dems

The Lib Dems have lost 5 seats and lost control of the council but must surely being quite pleased not to have lost more. Indeed they increased their vote since 2007 by just over 3,000. They will be calculating that the next elections in 2013 could leave them level with Labour on seats or even the second party.

Greens

On bristol247.com Tony Dyer the Green’s election guru had predicted two gains, Ashley and Southville. In the end they won in Ashley (with the highest vote on the night). This extra seat allows them to register officially as a party on the council which is a big step forward for them. However they will be a little concerned with the size of the loss in Southville and the failure to make progress in Easton.

Conservatives

The Tories are treading water they neither lost or won a seat. The tories in Bristol don’t seem to be going anywhere and they have more vulnerable seats up in 2013. They will be a little worried that unlike the national party which advanced against the lib dems while losing seats to Labour they have made little impact in Bristol.

Parliamentary Seats

Two parliamentary seats had all their local wards contested, Bristol East and Bristol South. There has been surprisingly little change in vote share since last years GE:

Bristol East

Labour + 2.6%

Con  +0.2%

Lib Dem – 4.9%

Bristol South

Lab +3.5%

Con -2.9%

Lib Dem -6.6%

Given the results it is hard to identify a real winner from the Bristol elections. All parties will take some cheer from the results and all have reasons to be depressed. Overall the Liberal Democrats, despite their losses, probably have had the best result given the national situation.

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Four Horsemen

Famine, War, Want and Williams

The Green Party has selected Ricky Knight from West Devon as their parliamentary candidate for Bristol West. Knight makes a great deal of the Green’s local election results and suggests that the seat is a ‘four horse race’.

Local election results have a poor record in predicting general elections and in Bristol west this is particularly tough. When Valerie Davey won Bristol West for labour in 1997, she received 6,000 votes more than the Labour local election candidates and on that day of Labour Landslide the Lib Dems won Cotham ward from Labour.  In 2001 Labour had another landslide but the Lib Dems secured their grip on Bishopston and Redland wards.  It is clear that the Liberal Democrats do much better in council elections in the constituency than they do in the parliamentary seat. In 1987 and 1992 Labour Party activists were told how local election results in key seats showed that they were about to win the general election, they didn’t.

The greens have also had a strong showing in local election results in the area for some years now but have failed to turn it into general election voting.  There are two factors which affect this:

1) Split voting – people voting one way at local elections and another at general elections.  Some of this is about specific candidates who tend to have a larger influence at local level.  Some people also use local elections to ‘punish’ the main parties.  Others vote on ‘local’ issues in council elections and national/international issues in the General.

2) Differential turnout. The number of people voting in local elections is smaller than in general elections. Those voting at the local level are not a representative sample of the voting electorate in general elections. Those who are more passionate about politics and more engaged in the local community are more likely to vote locally, also those who have been contacted by or know the candidates.  The general election turnout is likely to be around twice as high as the council elections and the main parties do better partly because general election coverage is focussed on who is likely to form a Government.

There are two websites that seek to identify the starting point for the 2010 general election taking account of the Parliamentary boundaries:

Electoral Calculus http://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk (this site also allows you to type opinion poll results into a calculator and predict the general election result in any seat, it also does its own calculations monthly on average of polls – popular with political geeks)

Its starting point for election (i.e. its calculation of the 2005 result on new boundaries is)

Lib Dem     18,157   38%

Labour       17,709  37%

Con                8,380  18%

Others          3,539     7% (this would be mainly green votes but also Respect/socialist Labour)

Majority       448       0.9%

UK Polling report http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog (this site analyses all polls and also has a rolling average but doesn’t predict the results in individual seats only overall)

Lib Dem    18,051  41%

Labour      17,411  39%

Con               6,117  14%

Other           3,010   7%

Majority        640   1.4%

These are both independent sites with no party political bias.  Although Knight is the best name of all the candidates for a horseman this seat is a two horse race.

http://www.bristol247.com/2009/12/13/green-candidate-says-bristol-west-is-four-horse-race/

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