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According to the pollster, anti-Tory tactical voting has had a negative impact on local elections, with the party losing 474 city council seats and all but one seat in major city mayoral races.
Rishi Sunak’s party is about 20 points behind Labor in national opinion polls and was expected to struggle, but there are signs of an unofficial and unplanned “progressive alliance” that could see things through. Experts said this contributed to the worsening of the situation.
More in Common’s Luke Trill said voters appear to be supporting the Tories, recognizing “more than ever” which local candidates are best placed to defeat them. He said that.
While in some southern seats, Labor began challenging the Liberal Democrats to become the main opposition party to the Conservative Party. There are a lot of reasons, but voters seem to be doing it organically in a lot of places,” Trill said.
“They seem to understand better than ever who is the best option to defeat the Conservatives, so they are voting Conservative.”
This phenomenon could also be seen in the results for Tunbridge Wells City Council, where Labor lost votes in 2022 but the Liberal Democrats made significant gains and took control of local government, bucking the national trend. said Trill.
Similarly, in wards such as Millbrook in Southampton, the Liberal Democrats and Greens’ vote share came under pressure, with Labor gaining slightly and overtaking the Conservatives.
Mr Trill said Labor and the Liberal Democrats were being squeezed in areas such as Norfolk and the Orton-Longueville ward in Peterborough, where the Green Party had made significant gains to defeat the incumbent Conservative Party.
Meanwhile, Labor’s vote has become more “efficient”. That’s because Sir Keir Starmer’s party “lost votes in probably fairly safe areas in the general election, but gained very large votes in areas where really big swings were needed.”
“If you look at their vote distribution, it’s very efficient and that’s worrying for the Conservatives because even if the difference between the two parties is small, they still end up with a lot of expectations in terms of seats. Because it has the potential to yield even greater results.”
Polling guru Sir John Curtis also emphasized the impact of tactical voting, writing: I On Saturday, he said: “Voters in the wards that the Conservatives were trying to protect were often more willing to vote for the person best placed to defeat the incumbent Conservative.”
However, Conservative election expert Lord Hayward expressed skepticism that there had been more tactical voting in this year’s local elections than in any other local elections, although he expressed skepticism that the Lib Dems’ victory in the Gaza conflict compared to the previous year, suggesting that the Greens were enjoying success in urban areas amid disillusionment with Labor’s stance on the Gaza conflict. Scheyer and others suggested that both parties could benefit from informal electoral agreements.
“The Liberal Democrats could take on the Conservatives in the shires, and the Greens could take on Labor in urban areas, targeting student, young, radical and Muslim votes,” Lord Hayward said.