Rarely do local elections have much to do with local politics. However hard local politicians struggle to keep a local focus, the political parties centrally fight them as proxies for future general elections. Last week was no different.
Of all the voters that I spoke to in the New Forest, they were focussed on the national picture and saw their vote as a comment on the Government’s performance rather than that of New Forest District Council which, almost without exception, they considered to be well run.
Of the two local issues that were raised with me, the biggest was potholes, which is a County Council responsibility rather than a matter for the District Council. The other was confined to specific locations where controversial housing developments had been approved. On this last question, my postbag divides between those who recognise that one of the major problems that we face in the New Forest is a desperate shortage of housing; and those who insist that the proposed developments are in the wrong place.
In any event, having had local elections based on a national rather than local focus, it is extremely difficult to make sense of the results. The psephologists have an algorithm for scaling up last week’s results where elections were held, to attribute similar results to where they weren’t held at all. And, so proceeding, to forecast what the result of a General Election would have been. I am very sceptical of the value of this exercise. First, even where national performance is at the forefront of their minds, nevertheless, people vote quite differently at local elections than they do at general elections.
Second, it is difficult enough to interpret the outcome on a party-political basis even within a relatively small geographical area. Take, for example, the New Forest West parliamentary division which comprises 12 of the New Forest District wards contested last week. Of those wards, in one each voter had three votes, in nine each voter had two votes, and in only two they had one vote as in a general election. To make interpretation even more complicated, it is clear from looking at the difference in votes cast for candidates of the same party within a single ward, that hundreds of voters used their multiple votes to vote for candidates of different parties.
Even more difficult, not every one of the main parties fielded a candidate in each ward. All this before we take into account the average turnout of only 33% against a general election where you would expect nearer 80%.
So, for what it is worth, taking the votes for the leading candidate of each party in each ward in New Forest West, I estimate that of the 25,542 votes cast , the vote shares attributable to each party are: Conservative 37%; LibDem 23% ; Labour 15%; Green 13% ; Independent 12%. As for what any of this bodes for the general election -which might not even be until Jan 2025, I suggest it is far too soon to tell.