The Conservatives will lose overall control of South Gloucestershire Council at Thursday’s local elections, an expert predicts. Independent statistician Nigel Marriott, from Bath, who made the most accurate forecast of the 2019 General Election, says the Tories’ eight-year hold on power is likely to end on May 4.
And he has pinpointed six key wards – all in the north fringe, between Bristol’s city boundaries and the M4/M5 – where the results could not only swing the result one way or the other but also indicate whether Labour or the Conservatives are having a very good or bad night nationally.
Nigel said that although Labour was the smallest of the three parties represented in the council chamber, behind the Lib Dems and the ruling Tories, the potential for gains from the Conservatives could well be the decisive factor. He said the Tories and Liberal Democrats were largely unchanged in national polling compared with 2019 but that Labour was up eight points, with “Other” groups, such as UKIP and independents, down by the same margin.
READ MORE: Live updates at voters head to the polls for Local Elections
Nigel said this suggested Labour could take votes from Others in some of the vital South Gloucestershire wards, especially those that were Labour/Conservative showdowns and where the smaller parties had candidates four years ago but were not standing this time and whose “Other” votes could pass to Labour.
And he said that even though the Conservative vote may not be down much, he expected it to lose the council to No Overall Control because that would take only a loss of three seats overall – the group currently has 33 councillors and requires 31 to retain its majority in the chamber. The statistician said quite a few Conservative-Labour battlegrounds would be interesting in the national context and could be early indicators of who voters across the country were backing.
“The main change nationally is that the ‘Other’ vote is down and the Labour vote is up,” he said. “In wards where Lib Dems are against Conservatives, that trend probably won’t apply. But there are quite a few Conservative v Labour wards in South Gloucestershire and we would expect the Labour vote to be up.”
He said questions that would be answered on polling day included whether the residents who voted for Other parties in 2019 would now vote for Labour, or if the Tories would lose votes to Labour because of the national trends. “In all probability this will go to No Overall Control because of the Labour gains,” Nigel said.
“To what extent that will be at the expense of the Conservatives is not all that clear. The Conservative vote in South Gloucestershire has been very steady between 41 and 44 per cent since 2007.”
He said that included four years ago when, despite having an unpopular Government, the party comfortably retained overall control in South Gloucestershire by bucking the trend elsewhere of voters abandoning the group on councils across England, including North Somerset and Bath & North East Somerset where Tory administrations were ousted.
Nigel said the national opinion polls putting Labour eight points up on 2019 and Others down eight points meant he expected Labour to gain votes in wards where Other candidates or parties who stood four years ago were not contesting the seats this year.
He said that where there were no Other candidates in 2019 then Labour could potentially take votes from Conservatives in wards where the race was between those two parties, while gains from the Lib Dems were also possible.
Nigel said the three Labour candidates in 2019 in Charlton & Cribbs, a large ward that elects three councillors, were a combined 10 percentage points behind the three Tories voted into office.
READ MORE: Local Elections 2023: All the places the South Gloucestershire Council election could be won
READ MORE: May local elections: South Gloucestershire Council dates and candidates list in full
He said UKIP votes – classed as Other – from four years ago were up for grabs here because the party was not fielding any candidates in 2023, although there were two new independents this time.
“This ward is an absolute classic illustration of the national trend – it’s where, if the national trend is reflected, I would be expecting to see Labour pick up all three seats,” he said.
“That is absolutely one to watch,” he said, adding that it would signal a bad night for Labour both locally and nationally if they failed to make inroads in Charlton & Cribbs.
UKIP votes from 2019 are also available to be picked up in Filton, the tightest ward and the only one with councillors from more than one party – one Labour, one Conservative.
Nigel said: “If Labour doesn’t take both seats, I would be very surprised, and it would mean they are doing badly.”
He said it would be much tougher for Labour to pick up seats in Stoke Gifford where they finished second four years ago but 20 points behind the Tories, although this was another ward where UKIP had a candidate then but not now and whose votes were destined elsewhere.
“If Labour takes seats here, that is a sign they are doing very well,” Nigel said.
He said Bradley Stoke South saw a sizeable vote for independents in 2019 but this time only the three main parties were contesting the two seats, so there could be a swing reflecting the national trend here from Other to Labour, which finished second behind the Conservatives.
The other two key wards Nigel picked out as ones to watch as Conservative/Labour fights are Bradley Stoke North, where the Greens, independents and Reform UK all have one candidate, making it harder for Labour to oust the Tories, and Patchway Consiton which Labour won at the last local elections with UKIP in second and the Tories third.
Read next
