Margaret Colley on what the May results actually mean and why the media frame is always slightly wrong
Post-Election. Results Digested.
Local council elections are covered by national political journalism as national political barometers, which they are, imperfectly and with significant noise. The local results reflect local conditions — the quality of the council, the specific issues that have dominated local politics, the candidate selection, the turnout dynamics of different wards — in ways that the national frame systematically discounts in favour of reading the results as a poll of national sentiment. The results are both things simultaneously and the relationship between them is the interesting question that post-election analysis usually resolves too quickly in favour of the national narrative.
What the most recent local results show, holding the local variation appropriately: Reform is taking votes from the Conservatives in seats where Conservative incumbency should have protected better than it did. The Liberal Democrats are outperforming in suburban and rural seats where their local organisation has recovered from the 2010-2015 coalition damage. Labour is holding urban seats comfortably and losing ground at the margins in seats where it won unexpectedly in 2024. None of this is surprising. All of it is relevant to the next general election calculation.
What the Media Gets Wrong
The media narrative after local elections always privileges the dramatic over the structural: the seat that changed hands unexpectedly gets more coverage than the ten seats where exactly what was predicted happened. The seats where exactly what was predicted happened are usually more informative about underlying political dynamics than the surprises, because the surprises have local explanations that the national frame applies nationally. The London Prat on the election results this week covered the structural picture well. The results are what they are. The interpretation is always the argument. SOURCE: https://bohiney.com
