Ward Activity On Polling Day

Stat-Crunch 4: Ward activity on polling day

Here's a link to a table I've compiled to show ward activity, with respect to turnout on election day.
There's a wide range of result in Stoke-on-Trent with the highest being 49.13% and the lowest being Springfield & Trent Vale with a 20.18% turnout at the polls.

I've also highlighted on the list where a non-Labour candidate was successful and there is a clear correlation between activity at the polls and Labour success.

Here's the spreadsheet containing a list of wards by turnout.

http://bit.ly/jyQWn3

Some early predictions...

I spent 15 minutes after lunch drawing up a couple of tables containing some improvised calculations to hopefully give an indication as to how voting may result on Thursday night.

I've used data collected by Pits n Pots on their poll (click here to have a look).
The poll has had just over 1000 votes since becoming active last Sunday so I thought now would be a good point to do a quick analysis.

Firstly, I'll show you my maths and then explain it and some of the factors making it unreliable after.

In my first table, I have simply taken the number of votes on the poll and divided it by the number of fielded candidates to give 'support per candidate'. This comes about because there are x amount of candidates per party across x amount of wards. The more votes for fewer candidates suggests a stronger amount of support for that party overall and perhaps more chance of scoring top at the polls.

As you can see, TUSAC and the Conservatives come top in the poll suggesting strong support overall with a score of 10 and 9.4 repectively.

Labour, the Independents and UKIP score the mid-points suggesting very good support.

And the Lib Dems lead the lower half of the board with a score of 2.4.

The nationalist parties all place near the bottom.

My second table uses percentages and is a bit more complex.

Here, I have calculated each party's % of total candidates first.
Next, I noted each party's % of votes on the PitsnPots poll.
Then I calculated the difference between % support and % of candidates.

This gave a score comparing the support for the party and the number of seats they're contesting. Essentially the same as above but calculated on % and not number of votes.

I believe the second table is more accurate in showing support for parties overall but I'm not a statistician, a mathmetician or a trained political commentator so I have no idea which (if either) is more accurate but they make interesting reading I think!

This table almost reflects the results of the previous except a few key differences.

Most notable are the opposite ends. It appears that the Conservatives are likely to have great support for their % of seats contested. On the other hand, the Lib Dems make up 22% of candidates but have only 10% support giving a score of -12.

The nationalist parties fare slightly better but this may be because they have a low number of fielded candidates.

Overall, the Conservatives (10), TUSAC (3), Labour (3) and Independents (2) are the only parties to have more % support than % of total candidates, suggesting they are the most likely to win seats on Thursday.

But remember...

The poll is open on the web but of course website users do not reflect the whole electorate for example, senior citizens are a large section of the voting community and often believed to be the least online. The data may only relfect how internet users who have voted on the pits n pots poll would vote but 1000 votes is a good sample to look at some trends.

Also, some users may vote more than once (how undemocratic!).

And then there's the wards issue. Who knows, the 1000 voters may only come from 5 wards across Stoke-on-Trent. It's impossible for the 1022 (to be exact) strong poll is ever going to be a fair reflection of the real result but the tables have certainly highlighted some trend and topics for discussion!

Recap: Party Election Broadcasts from the Big 3 for the May local elections

Just in case you missed their original broadcast earlier this month, I've embedded below the party election broadcasts from the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat parties.

Make of them what you will!

How much are the Big 3 in London thinking about local elections?

With local elections following almost a year on from the formation of the Coalition government on a national scale, just how important are the local elections of councillors to the big 3 in London?

Many newspapers and political commentators are suggesting this will be a big test in the confidence of the coalition government and an early indication as to how far Labour has come in its big recovery since losing power.

The key factor I keep in mind however is the fact that these are local ward elections and not MP elections. Voters aren't voting on a local to national stage but on a very local stage which will (in my opinion) affect the way a lot of people approach voting. It certainly does for me.

"Local elections in England are due to take place on 5 May 2011 in:

36 Metropolitan Boroughs in England – all by thirds

49 Unitary authorities in England – 19 by thirds and 30 all-up (including Stoke-on-Trent)

194 Second-tier districts in England– 70 by thirds and 124 all-up

26 district councils in Northern Ireland – all-up

Elections to the National Assembly for Wales, Scottish Parliament and Northern Ireland

Assembly will also take place on 5 May 2011.

The Government intends for these elections to be held alongside a referendum on voting

reform, in order to minimise the number of occasions on which people are asked to vote."

Click here for original source: Parliament briefing on local elections

Now I won't get out a calculator and them all up but that looks like a lot of councillors and elections to me!

So how important is the local election to the big national party?

With under a month to go till voting begins you'd expect some sort of coverage on the parties' websites so I had a look (in alphabetical order to show no bias of course!). As much as the subject enthuses me, I haven't all the time in the world to devote to StokeElect2011 so I've done this based solely on the home pages and direct links from the home page's articles etc.

Conservatives
The main headline of the Conservative party's website (April 9 at 1300) is (and in rather large font) 'CONSERVATIVES CONTEST 94% OF LOCAL ELECTION SEATS' with a big arrow leading to this article (click here) explaining how the Conservatives are dominating the field in local elections nationally with a nice picture of Minister Warsi looking informed and quotes from her regarding the elections in the article.

Good effort I'd say!

Labour
The Labour page only really contains one clue they're thinking about the local elections - the 'Your Voice' section at the top of the home page. You find a small paragraph confirming that Labour Councillors will be standing against coalition cuts and a 2 minute video of Ed Milliband reflecting on his school days, his Dad (you can see the family resemblance!) and talking to all sorts of people around the country. (Watch it on youtube here) It bigs up the power of the people but doesn't actually refer to local elections in any way. This gives the Labour webpage the overall impression that the elections are happening but there is no huge effort on a national level to address them.

Liberal Democrats
The first thing you notice about the Lib Dem home page is that it contains a lot more in a lot less space. Their homepage is a little more interactive with a rotating news bar at the top containing 5 lead stories - two of which refer to the AV vote system and how to join the campaign for fairer votes. There's nothing to do with local elections or councillors to be easily seen though.

Despite this, the Lib Dems are the only party who have a whole website dedicated to Stoke-on-Trent rather than a particular MP or campaign in Stoke-on-Trent. Or at least this is how it appears if you type 'Conservatives Stoke', 'Labour Stoke' and 'Lib Dems Stoke' into google.

Overall
Overall I think it's safe to say the Conservatives have clearly taken the lead when it comes to their home page reflecting local elections as a high priority. Interestingly enough, and I try to remain a political commentator only, the Conservatives point out in their article linked above that Labour has failed to field a candidate in nearly 30% of seats nationally - despite their big comeback.

But the question at the end of the day is how much does it matter?

Are voters in local elections swayed by what they read and hear about 'Party X' in the news every day on a national scale or do people shut that all away and focus on which individuals they want running their local Council?

What do you think? Comments are free below with no need to register.
Also, this article only looks at one teeny aspect of the Big 3 in London - their websites.
Other factors contribute to their attitude and portrayal to the public of course!