Predicting election results is a mix of art and science.\u00a0 We can all think of polls and pundits in the past who have got it wrong.\u00a0 But there are some signs observers can look out for to make at least a partial judgement.<\/p>\n
Yesterday (March 5th<\/sup>) I attended an excellent event at the BBC in Media City which looked at the North West (the region with the joint highest number of marginal constituencies) and attempted to make some predictions.<\/p>\n This got me thinking about what we should be looking for as indications of potential political success at election time.\u00a0 So I\u2019ll be writing a few pieces about the various measures and what they might mean.<\/p>\n Yesterday\u2019s predictions, which only involved four seats in the North West region changing hands, used a number of factors including financial donations, polling data, local election results, incumbency factors and so on.\u00a0 Audience members raised other potentially significant aspects such as levels of activism, key campaign issues and the personalities of the various contenders.<\/p>\n The aspect I am concentrating on today is local election results.<\/p>\n It is easy to look at a constituency, look at the local election results in the run up to a General Election, and make a party-based judgement on those figures.\u00a0 In fact, in isolation, local election results are among the weakest of predictors of GE success.\u00a0 Let\u2019s take Edge Hill\u2019s local constituency, West Lancashire.\u00a0 In the run up to 2010 there had been Conservative local victories in Skelmersdale.\u00a0 (If you don\u2019t know the area, think in terms of Labour suddenly winning Surrey).<\/p>\n These were unexpected and many felt this pointed to a growth in Tory support that would turn out the incumbent Rosie Cooper.\u00a0 In fact , although there was a small vote-share increase for the Conservatives, in line with the national trend, Ms Cooper is still the MP and had a 2010 majority of more than four thousand.<\/p>\n The thing is, local elections are simply different.\u00a0 Firstly the turnout can be considerably lower than in a General.\u00a0 Secondly, party allegiance can be weaker.\u00a0 Finally the personality and activity level of a local candidate, particularly one running on an \u201cus against them\u201d ticket can be significant in a way that simply does not transfer.\u00a0\u00a0 This becomes apparent on those polling days when a General Election and Local Election take place on the same day in the same area.\u00a0 Vote-splitting can be very common.<\/p>\n So what do local election results tell us?<\/p>\n Well they give some indication of party organisation.\u00a0 A badly organised party will not\u00a0 usually manage a large number of victories.\u00a0 They give some indication of activist levels as volunteers need to be found to stand and again found to campaign. And they give some indication of local roots and knowledge.<\/p>\n But what they don\u2019t do is tell us who will become an MP.<\/p>\n In 2001, had local election results been an indicator of national success I would have become an MP in Liverpool.\u00a0 This on its own should be a warning to those who put too much prediction weight on the colour of the local council.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Predicting election results is a mix of art and science.\u00a0 We can all think of polls and pundits in the past who have got it wrong.\u00a0 But there are some signs observers can look out for to make at least a partial judgement. Yesterday (March 5th) I attended an excellent event at the BBC in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1269,"featured_media":48,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32286],"tags":[32278,32290,32306,32340],"class_list":["post-77","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-election-2015","tag-general-election","tag-general-election-2015","tag-local-elections","tag-politics"],"yoast_head":"\n