PM would secure a 36-seat majority if there were an election tomorrow

Thursday’s local council elections in England were clearly good for the Conservatives and disappointing for Labour. With most of the district and unitary councils declared, the Tories have gained 11 councils and Labour have lost four.

But how good or bad is this really, and what could it mean for a general election? Normally, we would compare these results with the previous local elections to get some insight. That’s tricky this year, because some councils were last elected in 2016 and some in 2017. That makes simple comparisons difficult. And just comparing party vote share between general and local elections is pretty meaningless, as people vote differently at local council elections and often prefer independents and smaller parties.

A better baseline for comparison is a poll-based prediction for these results themselves. Many people are understandably a bit suspicious of polls since they have had some egregious errors in recent years. But data scientists have developed new methods, called MRP, which help to make polls a bit more accurate and to give fuller geographic information.

As it happens, Electoral Calculus together with the pollster Find Out Now did an MRP poll for the English district council elections, which was in last week’s Sunday Telegraph. This large poll, which contacted over 11,500 respondents, gave a council-bycouncil prediction showing which party would win each. It predicted overall that the Conservatives could win around a dozen councils and Labour might gain a couple.

Just looking at the councils which have already declared their results, the poll predicted that the Conservatives would gain nine of these and Labour would gain one. This like-for-like comparison shows that the Conservatives are doing better than expected (winning two councils more than forecast), but Labour are doing worse. Labour was expected to gain one council, but instead it has lost four.

In terms of vote share, Labour may be doing about 1 per cent worse than the poll suggested. Applying that 1 per cent downwards correction in Labour’s vote share to recent polls of Westminster voting intention would imply a Conservative lead over Labour of around 7 per cent. This would be enough for a comfortable majority in the House of Commons of 36 seats.

The results are bad for Labour in another way, because they also deprive the party of political momentum. Local elections are a good opportunity for protest votes against the government of the day, and can provide a springboard of activist enthusiasm and favourable media chatter. None of that will now happen for Labour.

One comfort for Sir Keir Starmer is that the Tory attack on the Red Wall has not advanced any further. The Conservatives have not gained any Red Wall councils, with their gains focused in the south, midlands, and rural north of England. Polling demographics also reveal that the Tories are not gaining any more Brexit-inclined or workingclass voters than they attracted in 2019.

That makes the situation less than disastrous for Labour. But with possibly only two years before the next general election, they have had a setback and their path is narrower. The Tories have the easier task of just holding on to their winning coalition. Boris Johnson is still able to reach more voters than other politicians.