The results are all declared, new councillors have been signed in, and activists have celebrated their triumphs and mourned their disasters. Another year’s local elections are over. So the remaining question is, how did the predictions go?
First, let’s take a look at my own predictions for the contests in Cambridge, and the mayoralty. Two years ago I got 16 out of 17 results correct, with only Jean Glasberg’s gain for the Greens in Newnham eluding me. Last year I managed my first ever 100% record, predicting 14 out of 14 results correctly. This year things were a little more challenging, and I only managed 12 out of 15. Here are the results:
The results I missed out on were the spectacular Green gain in Romsey, and the Lib Dem wins in Castle and the city council by-election in West Chesterton. In each case I thought Labour would hold on. Jamie Dalzell, the new Lib Dem councillor for West Chesterton, greeted me outside the count with the words “Oh ye of little faith!” Still, 12 out of 15 isn’t terrible, in these politically turbulent times.
I also ran a prediction competition this year, asking people to forecast the vote shares in the Mayoralty election, and the number of seats on the county council for each party. I was particularly amused to get a contest entry from one of the Mayoral candidates, though sadly they didn’t end up winning either the Mayoral election or the prediction competition.
Here are the results for the Mayoral election. On average, predictions underestimated Reform and overestimated the Lib Dems, but only by a few percent. In a very close second place was Gennaro Dello Ioio, but this year’s winner is Steve King, whose prediction was just 12.64% away from the actual outcome.
For the county council elections, the runner-up was Raymond Docwra, who was 12 seats out, but the winner, just 10 seats away from the actual result, was once again Steve King. Almost everyone underestimated Reform and overestimated the Conservatives. The Lib Dems also did better than most people expected.
Thanks to everyone who took part, I hope you enjoyed it!
Announcing the Phil Rodgers 2025 Election Prediction Competition! Predict the outcome of this year’s local elections for a chance of fame and glory!
This year there are just two categories – vote shares for the Mayor of the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority, and number of seats on Cambridgeshire County Council. You can enter for either or both.
How to enter:
Copy and paste the text below the instructions for one or both of the categories.
Replace the x’s with your predictions for the vote shares in the Mayoral election, or the number of seats in the County Council election.
Your score is the total difference between your predictions and the actual result. Lowest score wins. Each category is scored separately.
I will publish the names of the winner and runner-up for each category, and the winning predictions. All other entries will remain anonymous, though I will probably make some graphs out of them.
There is no entry fee and no prize apart from the glory of being more right than everyone else.
Mayor of the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority Paul Bristow (Conservative): x% Ryan Coogan (Reform UK): x% Lorna Dupré (Liberal Democrat): x% Bob Ensch (Green): x% Anna Smith (Labour): x%
Cambridgeshire County Council Conservatives: x seats Greens: x seats Labour: x seats Lib Dems: x seats Reform UK: x seats Independent: x seats Party of Women: x seats
With the US Presidential Election hurtling towards us, here’s a look at the mathematics of how the result will be decided. Famously, US Presidential elections are not simply a matter of who gets most votes, but rather who has the most support in the Electoral College. In 48 of the 50 states, and in the District of Columbia, all the Electoral College votes go to whichever candidate gets the most support across that state or district. The two exceptions are Maine and Nebraska – in both, the statewide winner gets two Electoral College votes, and the others are chosen by individual congressional districts within the state.
Rather like some UK elections, a lot of the state contests are seen as being a virtual certainty for one side or the other. States like Oklahoma, for example, are probably about as safe for Donald Trump as, for example, Whittlesey North is for Cambridgeshire Conservatives, while Kamala Harris can count on winning California with roughly the same level of certainty as the Cambridge Labour party has in Petersfield. Consequently, a great deal of campaigning effort focuses on the battleground states, where the result is genuinely uncertain. This map from 270towin.com gives an idea of the overall situation.
Unless the polls are significantly wrong – or shift dramatically before polling day – the outcome looks fairly certain in 43 of the states and the District of Columbia. Even in the two states where the winner doesn’t take all, it looks pretty likely that Maine will go Harris 3 – Trump 1, while Nebraska looks set for Trump 4 – Harris 1. If you are watching the results on election night, here are the states that Kamala Harris is expected to win:
If any of the above go to Donald Trump, then it’s very likely that he’s on his way back to the Oval Office. Conversely, here are the states that are expected to end up in the red column:
If Kamala Harris captures any of those, then it’s looking like a very good result for the Democrats.
That leaves seven states where the outcome of the election is likely to be decided. As you can see from the map above, these come in three groups. First is WIMIPA – Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, around the Great Lakes; then in the southeast there are Georgia and North Carolina; and Nevada and Arizona out west. These seven states have 93 electoral college votes between them. If Kamala Harris wins everything on the blue list above, that will give her 226 electoral college votes, and leave her needing 44 more to win. The red list will take Donald Trump to 219, so he’d need another 51. In fact, 50 would probably be enough – in the event of a 269-269 tie in the electoral college, the result would be decided by the House of Representatives, with each state delegation having one vote. In this scenario there would almost certainly be more Republican than Democrat states, so Donald Trump would win the White House by a whisker.
The crucial question, then, is which way the seven battleground states will go. With each one going to either Harris or Trump, there are 2 × 2 × 2 × 2 × 2 × 2 × 2 = 128 possible combinations, though some of these are a good deal more likely than others. Inevitably, I have a spreadsheet giving the outcome for each combination. Kamala Harris wins in 71 of the 128 scenarios, while Donald Trump is victorious in 54. There are three scenarios that lead to a dead heat…
…but as discussed above Donald Trump would likely emerge the victor for these too.
On the face of it, these numbers look slightly better for the Democrats, and this reflects the fact that their “starting point” of 226 electoral college votes is slightly ahead of the Republicans’ 219. However, the race is so close in the battleground states that only a small shift – or error – in the national polls would be enough to deliver most or all of these states to one candidate or the other. As I write, ten days before polling day, the polls put Donald Trump a whisker ahead in Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina, while the other four battlegrounds are virtually tied. If we just look at the combinations where the Republicans do take AZ, GA and NC, then Harris wins in only two of the sixteen possible scenarios:
Only a clean sweep of WIMIPA would save the Democrats in this situation.
While many commentators have described the US Presidential election as extremely close, it would be more accurate to say that it is extremely uncertain – only a tiny shift in the polls would be enough to deliver a large margin of victory in the electoral college. One thing is for sure, though – between now and polling day, voters in the seven battleground states will experience some of the most intense election campaigning that the world has ever seen.
Thanks to everyone who entered the prediction competition – it was certainly interesting to see how peoples expectations matched up to each other and to the actual results. Here’s a summary of how the predictions went for each seat.
Everyone was expecting a large Labour majority in Cambridge, though many of the entries thought it would be a bit larger than it turned out to be. The Lib Dems didn’t do quite as well as expected, though the Greens and even the Conservatives outperformed expectations. Second place in the prediction competition went to Daniel Zeichner’s election agent Steve King, but the champion predictor for Cambridge was George Colwell.
Ely and East Cambridgeshire was widely seen as a Conservative/Lib Dem marginal, with some predictions getting very close to the outcome. Runner-up was Nicolas Andrews-Gauvain, and the winner was Michael Bigg.
Most predictors expected Labour’s Alex Bulat to edge out Conservative Ben Obese-Jecty, but in the event the result went the other way. The Lib Dems and Reform slightly underperformed against expectations as well. Runner up for Huntingdon was Nicolas Andrews-Gauvain, while Michael Bigg made it two in a row with a second win.
In North East Cambridgeshire, Steve Barclay did better than most predictions expected, while the Lib Dems did a bit worse. George Colwell was runner-up, while Gennaro (x.com/puzzleGen) was the winner.
There were some very accurate predictions for North West Cambridgeshire, which was widely seen as a Conservative/Labour marginal, though most predictors thought Shailesh Vara would hold on against Sam Carling’s challenge. Michael Bigg took the runner-up spot, while George Colwell took the win.
Throughout the campaign I was describing St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire as the least predictable seat in the county, but in the end that honour went to Peterborough, where Conservative Paul Bristow very nearly managed to overturn the widespread expectation of a very comfortable gain for Labour’s Andrew Pakes. In part this was due to a lower-than-expected Reform vote, while a strong showing from the Workers Party certainly ate in to Labour’s support. While nobody got very close, Steve King was runner-up, and first place once again went to George Colwell.
In South Cambridgeshire the widespread expectation of a very comfortable gain for Lib Dem Pippa Heylings turned out to be correct, though the Conservatives outperformed expectations, while the opposite was true for Labour. Michael Bigg was runner up, and first place once again went to George Colwell, who by now is starting to look like the kid who won all the prizes at school sports day.
Finally, St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire, while it didn’t manage to be as unpredictable as Peterborough, did at least manage to be fairly unpredictable, and it also attracted the largest number of entries. The Lib Dems did quite a lot better than expected, while Labour significantly underperformed expectations. This time George Colwell only managed the runner-up spot, and the winning prediction came from Richard Tomlinson.
Congratulations, then to George Colwell, who managed four winning predictions and two second places; and to Michael Bigg, who scored two wins and two second places; and also to Gennaro (puzzleGen) and Richard Tomlinson, with one win each. Thanks to everyone who took part, I hope you enjoyed it!
Announcing the Phil Rodgers Cambridgeshire General Election Prediction Competition! Predict the general election vote shares for one or more of the Cambridgeshire constituencies for a chance of fame and glory!
How to enter:
Entries must be for one or more of the Cambridgeshire constituencies. You can enter for just one constituency, or all eight, or anywhere in between.
For each constituency, send me your prediction of the percentage share of the vote for each candidate.
Your score is the total difference between your predictions and the actual share of the vote for each candidate. Lowest score wins. Each constituency is scored separately.
Send your entry by email to phil@philrodgers.co.uk or by direct message to x.com/PhilRodgers (DMs are open). Entries must reach me before the polls open at 7am on 4 July 2024.
I will publish the names and predictions of the winner and runner-up for each constituency. All other entries will remain anonymous, though I will probably make some graphs out of them.
There is no entry fee and no prize apart from the glory of being more right than everyone else.
Here are candidate lists for each constituency, which you can copy and edit to send me your entry. Remember that you don’t have to enter for every constituency; each one will be scored separately.
Cambridge Khalid Abu-Tayyem (Workers): x% David Carmona (Independent): x% Keith Garrett (Rebooting Democracy): x% Shane Manning (Conservative): x% Sarah Nicmanis (Green): x% Cheney Payne (Lib Dem): x% Daniel Zeichner (Labour): x%
Ely and East Cambridgeshire Robert Bayley (SDP): x% Charlotte Cane (Lib Dem): x% Andy Cogan (Green): x% Ryan Coogan (Reform): x% Lucy Frazer (Conservative): x% Hoo-Ray Henry (Official Monster Raving Loony): x% Elizabeth McWilliams (Labour): x% Obi Monye (Independent): x% Rob Rawlins (Independent): x%
Huntingdon Chan Abraham (Independent): x% Mark Argent (Lib Dem): x% Alex Bulat (Labour): x% Georgie Hunt (Green): x% Ben Obese-Jecty (Conservative): x% Sarah Smith (Reform): x%
North East Cambridgeshire Steve Barclay (Conservative): x% David Chalmers (Lib Dem): x% Andrew Crawford (Green): x% Javeria Hussain (Labour): x% David Patrick (Independent): x% Clayton Payne (Workers): x% Christopher Thornhill (Reform): x%
North West Cambridgeshire Sam Carling (Labour): x% James Sidlow (Reform): x% Bridget Smith (Lib Dem): x% Elliot Tong (Green): x% Shailesh Vara (Conservative): x%
Peterborough Paul Bristow (Conservative): x% Andrew Pakes (Labour): x% Nick Sandford (Lib Dem): x% Nicola Day (Green): x% Sue Morris (Reform): x% Amjad Hussain (Workers): x% Tom Rogers (Christian Peoples Alliance): x% Zahid Khan (Independent): x%
South Cambridgeshire Chris Carter-Chapman (Conservative): x% Harrison Edwards (Reform): x% Miranda Fyfe (Green): x% James Gordon (Independent): x% Pippa Heylings (Lib Dem): x% Luke Viner (Labour): x%
St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire Anthony Browne (Conservative): x% Stephen Ferguson (Independent): x% Kathryn Fisher (Green): x% Guy Lachlan (Reform): x% Marianna Masters (Labour): x% Ian Sollom (Lib Dem): x% Bev White (Party of Women): x%
This page lists hustings events for the 2024 General Election in Cambridge, Ely & East Cambridgeshire, South Cambridgeshire, and St Neots & Mid Cambridgeshire. For hustings that have already taken place, there are links to recordings where available. Please send any additions or corrections to phil@philrodgers.co.uk.
Cambridge:
Tuesday 11 June, 7pm: Cambridge Climate and Environmental Hustings. Chaired by Professor of Economic Geography, Mia Gray. Recordings from the event on Antony Carpen‘s YouTube channel.
Wednesday 19 June, 6:30pm: Hustings on the future of Cambridge at the Friends Meeting House, 12 Jesus Lane, Cambridge, CB5 8BA. Organised by Friends of the Cam and FeCRA. Recording of the event is here (sound quality improves as it goes on).
Wednesday 26 June, 7pm: Cambridge City Foodbank hustings, Church of the Good Shepherd, Mansel Way, Arbury, CB4 2ET. Organised in partnership with local anti-poverty organisations, including Jimmy’s, It Takes a City, and YMCA Cambridgeshire. Details here.
Ely & East Cambridgeshire:
Sunday 30 June, 6pm: General Election Hustings at Ely Cathedral, chaired by Lord Wilson of Dinton. Details and free tickets here.
Friday 21 June, 7:30pm: Great Shelford hustings, St Mary’s Church, Great Shelford. Details here, recording here.
Monday 24 June, 7pm: Queen Edith’s Community Forum hustings, St John the Evangelist church, Hills Road, Cambridge, CB2 8RN. Hosted by Julian Clover. Details here. Opening speeches here.
Wednesday 26 June, 7pm: Sawston hustings. Sawston Free Church, 1 High Street, Sawston, CB22 3BG. Open to all.
A few days ago at a certain Cambridge hostelry I met one of this year’s City Council candidates, who asked me, “How do you work out your election predictions?” to which I replied, “Well, I have this special piece of seaweed…” In truth my predictions are mostly based on trends in the results from previous years, as well as looking at where the parties are focusing their efforts, trying to balance what I hear from various campaigners and adding a modest amount of hunch. I’ve never yet managed to get every seat correct, though I was pretty pleased with getting 16 out of 17 last year – Jean Glasberg’s gain for the Greens in Newnham was the one that got away.
This year’s election may turn out to be rather less predictable, with more wards than usual being actively contested. This graph shows the majorities at the most recent local election, which for most wards was last May, but in King’s Hedges was the July by-election, and the November one in Queen Edith’s. Where more than one seat was up at once, I’ve based the percentages on the highest vote for each party.
As you can see, there are relatively few double-figure majorities, and even some of these are battleground wards this year. Last year, with the congestion charge in the headlines, every ward saw a swing to the Conservatives, though they didn’t win any seats apart from in the King’s Hedges by-election. A key question this year is how much impact the issue is still having on the doorsteps – clearly there is some, but rather less than last time. Another recurring theme this year has been potholes, though ironically the City Council doesn’t have any responsibility for these – they fall to the County Council, whose elections will be held next year.
Labour currently holds 25 of the 42 seats on the City Council, and need to hang on to 22 of them to keep their majority – though they could still retain control with 21 seats thanks to the Mayor’s casting vote. Even if the Mayor were to lose her seat this year, she would still preside over the election of her successor at the council’s Annual Meeting, and would be able to cast a deciding vote in the event of a tie. However, it almost certainly won’t come to that. One-third of city councillors are up for election this year, and while Labour are defending nine seats, their other 16 seats aren’t up this time. This means they only need to win five this year to keep control, and six to keep a majority, and it seems very likely that they will do at least as well as that. However, they are undoubtedly under pressure – the Lib Dems are campaigning hard in the Chesterton wards, the Greens are pressing in Coleridge, and the Conservatives are mounting a challenge in Cherry Hinton and King’s Hedges.
On to the wards. I’ve already taken a look at the candidates in my Cambridge Independent column, so here I’ll concentrate on the likely outcome for each contest.
Abbey prediction: Green hold. The Greens are now well-established as the leading party in Abbey, and the main risk for Naomi Bennett is that her supporters will assume she’s bound to win and not bother turning out to vote. While Labour have put some work into the ward, their main focus this year has been elsewhere.
Arbury prediction: Labour hold. Arbury is my home ward, and the only election leaflets we’ve had through the letterbox this year have been from Labour. While the Conservatives managed to boost their vote last time thanks to the congestion charge issue, they were still in a fairly distant second place. If Patrick Sheil is re-elected for Labour on Thursday, he will have managed the remarkable feat of winning five elections in Arbury since 2017, despite the normal term of office being four years.
Castle prediction: Labour hold. With two vacancies last time, Castle was closely contested by the Lib Dems, Labour, and Independent candidate David Summerfield. While Mr Summerfield has fought an active campaign this year and is certainly in with a chance, I think the most likely outcome is for Labour’s Antoinette Nestor to hold her seat.
Cherry Hinton prediction: Labour hold. You can see from the graph just how dramatic last year’s result was, with the Conservatives coming within a whisker of victory in this normally safe Labour seat. However this time I think the combination of a better-organised Labour campaign, a less intense Conservative one, and the reduced impact of the congestion charge issue, will combine to increase Labour’s majority – though probably not to the gaping margins of earlier years.
Coleridge prediction: Labour hold. This is one of the wards that I am least certain of, as the Greens have been mounting a strong challenge to Labour. They need an 8% swing from Labour to take the seat, and while they managed 9% in Newnham last year, that was largely by taking votes from the Lib Dems, which are in shorter supply in Coleridge. So I think Labour will hang on this year, but with the Greens establishing themselves firmly in second place, and well-positioned for future years.
East Chesterton prediction: Labour hold. The Lib Dems have been targeting East Chesterton strongly this time, and the seat could go either way, but I think Gerri Bird’s personal vote will help to see her re-elected for Labour.
King’s Hedges prediction: Labour hold. King’s Hedges is the top Conservative target this year, and they will be hoping to add to the seat they won at the by-election in July. However a less chaotic situation for Labour, combined with the reduced impact of the congestion charge issue, should be enough for Cambridge Mayor Jenny Gawthrope Wood to hold on.
Market prediction: Lib Dem hold. The Lib Dems have had some close-run results in recent years, and Labour have been putting some effort into the ward, but I think Tim Bick’s long record as a Market councillor should see him re-elected reasonably comfortably.
Newnham prediction: Green gain from Lib Dems. The graph tells the story of Newnham elections in recent years, with a falling Lib Dem vote matched by a rising Green one. While Labour have more or less managed to hold their own, it’s looking very much like another Green gain this year, with the party well on the way to establishing Newnham as their second stronghold after Abbey.
Petersfield prediction: Labour hold. This is the prediction I’m most confident of this year; Petersfield is now Labour’s safest seat in Cambridge, and there seems little to threaten their towering majority.
Queen Edith’s prediction: Lib Dem hold. With Independent candidate Sam Davies no longer contesting the seat, it’s likely that Lib Dem Immy Blackburn-Horgan will repeat her victory in November’s by-election. Labour came quite close in the by-election, but in a city-wide election Queen Edith’s will likely be less of a priority for them.
Romsey prediction: Labour hold. Romsey is perhaps slightly less predictable this year, thanks to an Independent candidate campaigning on the Mill Road bridge issue, amongst other things, but I think Labour’s towering majority in the ward in previous elections should be more than enough for them to hold the seat comfortably.
Trumpington prediction: Lib Dem hold. Although Trumpington is more challenging for the Lib Dems than it once was, it remains one of their safer seats in the city. They will still have to work hard to keep ahead of Labour, but I think they are likely to manage it this year.
West Chesterton prediction: Labour hold. These days West Chesterton is perhaps the inverse of Trumpington, with Labour having to work hard to maintain their smallish majority over the Lib Dems. I expect they will manage it again this year.
Overall, then, my predictions amount to the perhaps not terribly exciting outcome of nine Labour holds, three Lib Dem holds, one Green hold, and a Green gain from the Lib Dems in Newnham. This would mean a city council composition of 25 Labour, 10 Lib Dems, five Greens, one Conservative and one Independent, with Labour’s majority unchanged at eight. Still, there is a fair amount of uncertainty; it’s not beyond the bounds of possibility that Labour could lose one or more of Castle, Coleridge, East Chesterton or King’s Hedges, which would leave them looking more vulnerable at the next city council elections in 2026. On the other hand their large leads in the national opinion polls could help them pick up an unexpected seat or two.
The first stage of this year’s election count is taking place immediately after the polls close at 10pm on Thursday. This is the verification stage, which checks that each ballot box has the expected number of ballot papers in it. Party workers observe this process closely, and can get a pretty good idea of the likely result, though election law prevents them from telling anyone outside the count what it is. There will then be a pause until 10am on Friday morning, to give everyone the chance to get some sleep. Then the second stage of the count will begin, with the ballot papers being separated into piles for each candidate, to determine the winner. The Police and Crime Commissioner election will be counted first, with the City Council results following afterwards. I’ll be at the count on Friday to bring you all the results on Twitter, and probably some commentary on Cambridge 105 as well. As ever, best wishes to everyone out campaigning this year, as well as the tireless City Council election workers who keep the wheels of democracy turning.
Now that I’m writing a regular politics column for the Cambridge Independent, this poor old blog hasn’t been seeing very much action in recent months. On the other hand, having a print deadline does at least concentrate the mind enough to make me turn out an article once a month. But with my March column already being edited at Cambridge Independent Towers ahead of publication next week, I thought I would dust off this faithful old website and take a look at the prospects for the Police and Crime Commissioner elections which are now less than seven weeks away.
These Cambs PCC elections (I’m sorry, but there’s a limit to how many times I’m typing out “Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Police and Crime Commissioner elections”, and we’ve already reached it) are the fourth set to take place since the post was first established in 2012, but the first to be held under First Past the Post. Previous elections used the Supplementary Vote system, which gave voters a second choice vote if their first choice didn’t make it into the top two. However, following results such as Nik Johnson’s startling victory for Labour in the election for Combined Authority Mayor with the help of Lib Dem vote transfers, the Government has decided to get rid of the Supplementary Vote for Mayoral and PCC elections, and stick with First Past the Post instead. They have already been rewarded in contests such as the election for Mayor of Bedford last year, which the Conservative candidate won with 33.1% of the vote, edging out the Lib Dem on 32.8%, while the remaining third of the electorate, most of whom voted Labour, had no opportunity to express a second preference. Even before the Supplementary Vote was abolished, the Conservatives performed strongly enough in Cambs PCC elections to win all of them so far. However, Labour’s Nicky Massey ran them pretty close last time. She was 11.6% behind Conservative Darryl Preston after the first round, but second choice vote transfers closed the gap to just 5.5%. But without the Supplementary Vote, can Labour hope to make up enough ground this time to win? I have to say my initial gut feeling was, probably not. But after a more detailed look at the numbers, I’m not so sure about that.
As I write, three candidates have declared themselves for the 2024 Cambs PCC elections. The incumbent Conservative, Darryl Preston, is hoping for a second term of office. His Labour opponent is Anna Smith, who was unceremoniously ejected from the leadership of Cambridge City Council by her own party after the last local elections, but who already has a good deal of experience at the county-wide level thanks to being Deputy Mayor of the Combined Authority. The Lib Dems are represented by Edna Murphy, who sits for Bar Hill on the County Council. Other candidates could emerge by the time nominations close on April 5th, but they may well be deterred by the hefty £5,000 deposit required to stand. You only get this back if you receive at least 5% of the vote.
Looking at previous results in Cambs PCC elections, a few things jump out of the spreadsheet. The first is the relationship between the vote shares and the state of the national polls; the second is the potential impact of a Reform Party candidate, should one emerge; and the third is the effect on turnout of whether or not there is a simultaneous local election taking place. Let’s look at each of these in turn.
Quite a striking feature of the last two Cambs PCC elections is that all but one of the candidates received a vote share which was very similar to their party’s standing in the national opinion polls. The exception was the Lib Dem candidate, Rupert Moss-Eccardt, who in both 2016 and 2021 did substantially better than his party was doing in the polls, though he still finished in third place on both occasions. Here’s the result of the May 2016 Cambs PCC election, compared to the opinion polls at the time:
2016 Cambs PCC election first preference votes
As you can see, everyone except the Lib Dem was within 1% of their party’s rating in the opinion polls of the time. Politically, of course, the national situation was very different to today – David Cameron was Prime Minister, and the Brexit referendum was just seven weeks away.
It was a fairly similar picture in the 2021 Cambs PCC elections, when Boris Johnson was Prime Minister and the nation was starting to emerge from the pandemic. Here’s the graph:
2021 Cambs PCC election first preference votes
One again the PCC vote shares were very close to the national polls, except for the Lib Dem candidate. However, this pattern doesn’t hold if you go back to the very first PCC elections in November 2012:
2012 Cambs PCC election first preference votes
On this occasion, in the third year of the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition government, the Conservative candidate Graham Bright managed a 7-point lead in the first round of voting, despite the Conservatives trailing Labour by 11 points in the national polls. However, the picture was complicated by the presence of two Peterborough-based Independents and an English Democrat on the PCC ballot paper.
What does all this tell us about the 2024 contest? Currently, the polls are showing some pretty massive Labour leads. Here’s the average of some recent national polls:
Clearly, if this year’s PCC election follows the pattern of the last two, then even allowing for the Lib Dems outperforming their national opinion poll rating, we can expect a comfortable Labour victory. However, if the Conservatives can repeat their 2012 trick of doing 18 points better relative to Labour in the PCC election than in the national polls, then it’s looking a lot closer.
A key factor in the election could be the presence or absence of a Reform Party candidate, who would be expected to take more votes from the Conservatives than from the other parties. However, so far I have seen no sign of one – the previous Reform candidate for Cambs PCC, Sue Morris, is the party’s prospective Parliamentary candidate in Peterborough this year. It’s possible that Reform may have been put off this time after winning just 3.5% of the vote in 2021, resulting in an expensive lost deposit – though their much improved standing in the polls suggests they would be likely to hold on to their deposit this time. While it’s hard to put an exact figure on it, no Reform candidate is good news for the Conservatives, while if one does appear, then Labour will be happier. We’ll have to wait until the candidate list is published in early April to find out.
Another factor which could affect the result is which council areas have other elections going on at the same time. I think it’s fair to say that the PCC elections have never really captured the imagination of the voters – in the first elections back in 2012, which were not held alongside any others, the turnout was a meagre 15%. Even in 2021, when the pandemic had deprived voters of a visit to the polling station the previous year, and all voters had Mayoral and council elections happening on the same day, overall turnout was just 37%. But perhaps the most interesting turnout figures are from the 2016 elections, when some council areas had elections on the same day and others didn’t. Here’s a graph of the turnout in each district then:
2016 PCC election turnout by council area
Looking at the graph it probably won’t surprise you to learn that it was Fenland and East Cambs which had no other elections on the same day, while the other four council areas did. Clearly, voters are more likely to turn out if they have a councillor to elect as well as a PCC – possibly because they are more interested in council elections, or perhaps because it just means there’s more campaigning going on. In any case, there is a noticeable effect on turnout. We have to make some adjustment for the fact that Fenland and East Cambs tend to have slightly lower turnout even when they do have a council election on the same day, but even taking this into account, it looks like only about two thirds as many voters will turn out for a PCC election alone, compared to when there’s a council election as well. This could matter this year, because Cambridge and Peterborough also have local elections on May 2nd, while the other four council areas don’t – and Cambridge and Peterborough are Labour’s strongest areas. If you take the 2021 result and adjust it accordingly, this effect is worth about four percentage points to Labour – not a huge number, but possibly crucial in a close race. You can find the details of how I calculated this in this spreadsheet.
What other factors could influence the outcome? Traditionally, the Conservatives have scored better on law and order than on some other policy areas – but YouGov’s tracker poll suggests that Labour have recently overtaken them even here. Is the change of electoral system going to affect voter behaviour? I really don’t see this making a big difference – tactical considerations have never played much of a part in PCC elections.
So what’s the bottom line? I started off with my gut feeling saying that Darryl Preston was probably going to hang on, but looking at the numbers it’s pretty hard to sustain that. What’s the worst that could happen for Labour? The national polls might tighten; Reform might decide not to run a candidate; a burst of enthusiasm for PCC elections might keep the turnout up in the less Labour-friendly areas. But even assuming all this, I think the Conservatives are so unpopular nationally at the moment that, given a largely consequence-free way of kicking the Government, that’s what voters are going to do. So I think Labour are now in pole position to win the Cambs PCC vote – and it’s likely that Anna Smith will be a lot happier after this year’s elections than she was after last year’s.
Once again the Cambridge local election timetable approaches its annual crescendo, and once again I jiggle my trusty election-forecasting seaweed to try to determine what verdict the voters of Cambridge will deliver on Thursday. After the disruption of the pandemic and the drama of the 2021 elections, it now feels that we are back in a more regular electoral rhythm. Last year Labour further consolidated their already extremely solid grip on the City Council, taking three seats from the Lib Dems, though they also lost one in Abbey to the Greens. The Lib Dems will be hoping for a better outcome than last year’s battering; they have just three seats to defend, while they will be looking for gains from at least some of the 12 Labour seats up for election.
Politically the big issue this year has been the Greater Cambridge Partnership’s congestion charge and bus subsidy proposals. While the decisions on this will be taken first by the GCP Board and then by the County Council, the current elections do have a direct bearing on the plans, because the City Council appoints one of the three voting members of the GCP, and in practice the plans will not go ahead without the City Council’s support. Labour, the Lib Dems, and the Greens have all put out statements opposing various aspects of the current proposals, while leaving the door open to some extent to supporting a modified form of congestion charging. The Conservatives have fought a more than usually active local election campaign – though that’s a pretty low bar – focusing on their outright opposition to congestion charging. Another issue on the doorsteps has been the state of the roads, though except in Arbury where there is a County Council by-election, canvassers will have had to explain to voters that the City Council has no responsibility for roads and can’t do anything to fix the potholes.
A change this year for me personally is that I’ve been writing a monthly column for the Cambridge Independent looking at local politics, so my usual look forward at the election campaign was published in the newspaper rather than here on my blog. You can read it on the CI website here.
On to the election predictions. As usual one-third of the City Council is up for election, specifically the seats held by those councillors who finished second in their ward in the 2021 all-up elections. There are also a couple of by-elections, in Castle and Coleridge, following the resignations of Sarah Baigent and Lewis Herbert respectively. Here’s a look at each of the wards, with the traditional graph of recent election results to give some political context.
After winning two of the Abbey City Council seats in 2021, the Greens added a third last year, and are defending the ward this year. Their incumbent councillor Hannah Copley is standing down, with Young Green campaigner Elliot Tong standing as their candidate this time. Labour’s Zarina Anwar is the main challenger. However I think the Greens are well enough established in Abbey to hold the seat, and may continue the increase in their vote of recent years.
As the graph shows, Arbury is nowadays a safe seat for Labour. Their candidate this year is the long-serving and well-known councillor Mike Todd-Jones, who I think will have no trouble in being re-elected. There may be an uptick in the Conservative vote, as their candidate Robert Boorman has been more active than some of the student candidates his party fielded in previous years.
Castle is one of the most closely-fought wards this year, with two seats up for election, and for Labour the appealing prospect of removing the next Lib Dem candidate for Cambridge MP, Cheney Payne, from her council seat. However Labour also have a seat to defend, following the resignation of Sarah Baigent, and the Lib Dems will be equally keen for a gain. Castle has featured heavily this year in social media photos of smiling canvassers celebrating the great reception they are getting on the doorstep, indicating that both the main parties are fighting it hard. There has also been an active campaign from anti-congestion-charge Independent David Summerfield. Overall I’m going to wimp out a little bit and predict a split result – one Labour and one Lib Dem hold. This is virtually certain to be at least half right, though it’s quite likely that one of the two parties may make a gain and take both seats.
Labour’s three Cherry Hinton City Councillors have between them clocked up an impressive 59 years on the council – 12 years for Mark Ashton, 19 for Russ McPherson and 28 for Rob Dryden. This year it’s Rob Dryden up for election, and there’s no reason to think that he won’t extend his record run on the council for another four years. Cherry Hinton is the only ward in Cambridge where the Conservatives finished second last time, and their candidate Zachary Marsh has been at the forefront of their campaigning this year, so we may see some vote increase for the blue team.
While there are also two seats up in Coleridge, following Lewis Herbert’s resignation from the council, there is a good deal less doubt about them than in Castle – Labour should hold both easily. Like Castle, the Coleridge ballot paper also features a future Parliamentary candidate, this time Sarah Nicmanis of the Greens. She will be hoping to boost her profile by holding on to second place.
In recent years East Chesterton has been about as safe for Labour as Queen Edith’s or Trumpington have been for the Lib Dems – not a completely safe seat, but one where they are generally regarded as favourites. Labour candidate Alice Gilderdale’s switch from Market ward does nothing to dispel this impression, and I’m expecting that she will hold on for Labour, with Lib Dem Bob Illingworth once again runner-up. Veteran UKIP candidate Peter Burkinshaw may not find himself bottom of the poll for a change, thanks to the presence on the ballot paper of Heritage Party candidate Colin Miller.
King’s Hedges is another seat where it is not very difficult to predict that Labour will win comfortably. With campaigning effort focusing on other seats where the outcome is more in doubt, the change in vote share in seats like King’s Hedges often reflects national trends as much as anything else – and these have run in favour of Labour since the seat was last contested. A large majority for Alex Collis seems certain.
So far my predictions have been for holds all the way, but I think Market will buck the trend, with the Lib Dems regaining the seat from Labour. Although the graph above suggests the Lib Dems have won in every year recently, there were three vacancies in 2021, and the graph only shows the results for the highest-placed candidate for each party. Second place in 2021 went to Labour’s Alice Gilderdale, and it is her seat that is up for re-election this year. I think Lib Dem Anthony Martinelli is well placed to recapture it and return to the City Council.
Newnham provides one of the most interesting contests this year, with a genuine three-way battle between Labour, the Lib Dems, and the Greens – indeed it is the Greens’ second target seat in the city after Abbey. As you can see from the graph, the trend in the last couple of years has been for Labour and the Greens to increase their vote shares at the expense of the Lib Dems. The most reliable prediction we can make about the result this year is that the Conservatives will finish fourth, but I’m going to plump for a Labour hold, with Anne Miller succeeding her colleague Niamh Sweeney.
Many of Labour candidate Katie Thornburrow’s appearances in “happy canvassers” photos on social media have been in wards outside Petersfield, which gives you an idea of how confident Labour are of keeping this seat. While it’s been slightly less safe for them in recent years than their core strongholds, it’s still looking like an easy win for them.
With Independent councillor Sam Davies not up for re-election until next year, it’s likely that Queen Edith’s will go back to its usual pattern of being the nearest thing the Lib Dems still have to a safe seat in Cambridge. Like Katie Thornburrow in Petersfield, Labour’s candidate Thomas Ron has been campaigning a good deal in other wards, but in this case I think it’s because Labour are less optimistic about their chances in Queen Edith’s, and expect the seat to go to Lib Dem Karen Young. The ward also features one of the two Independent candidates in Cambridge this year, Antony Carpen. While I don’t expect him to win, I do think he’ll exceed the 89-vote total of his alter ego Puffles the Dragon Fairy in 2014.
Labour could have done no campaigning at all in Romsey and still been virtually certain of winning it, but in fact they have done a good deal. This will be a very safe hold for Mairéad Healy.
Trumpington was once a Conservative stronghold in Cambridge, but a good deal of housebuilding and the general leftward drift of the city’s politics mean it is now reasonably reliable for the Lib Dems – though, as Katie Thornburrow’s win in 2018 demonstrates, not entirely so. However I think Lib Dem councillor Ingrid Flaubert should hold on reasonably comfortably.
Both the Chesterton wards seem to be particularly resistant to my attempts to predict their election results, and I’ve only done slightly better than flipping a Lib Dem/Labour coin in recent years, so bear that in mind when I say that I think Rachel Wade will hold the seat for Labour this year. Lib Dem Jamie Dalzell will be hoping that West Chesterton voters thwart my prediction once again and return him to the City Council instead.
So overall my forecast this year amounts to holds everywhere, except for a Lib Dem gain from Labour in Market. Frankly I’m hoping for a little more excitement than that when the votes are counted on Friday. Will a surge of anti-congestion-charge voting sweep away long-established councillors? Will any of the safer wards deliver an unexpected knife-edge result? Will we see Puffles the Dragon Fairy sitting alongside his Independent friend Antony Carpen in the council chamber? In each case I think the answer is, well, probably not. But we will certainly have a good number of new faces on the City Council, and if Cambridge politics guarantees one thing, it’s that there will be plenty of challenging issues for them to engage with. First among these, of course, is the congestion charge, looming like a political sandstorm ready to sweep back into town once the election is out of the way. The long-awaited results of last year’s GCP consultation will finally be published, and it seems likely that they’ll be accompanied by some significantly modified proposals, which even now are being prepared behind closed doors by council officers. What these proposals will be, and whether they’ll be politically deliverable, is the big question in Cambridge politics this year. Another significant issue, though it’s had a good deal less attention, is road classification, which could develop into plans for widespread road closure points across the city. And it won’t be all that long until the campaign for the next General Election starts to get underway.
I’m planning to be at the election count this year, for the time since the 2019 General Election, thanks to a badly-timed bout of Covid last May. The count will take place at the University Sports Centre on the West Cambridge site; it starts on the Friday morning, and we should get the first results around lunchtime. I’ll also be keeping an eye on how things are developing in East Cambridgeshire, where the Lib Dems are hoping to improve on their close second place behind the Conservatives in 2019. You can follow me on Twitter for all the latest developments, and very probably a graph or two. Thanks for reading!
The Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority is currently consulting on its Bus Strategy, but there seem to be some strange goings-on with the strategy document. A first version was reviewed by the Authority’s Transport & Infrastructure Committee on 16 November; then, an updated version was approved by the Board on 30 November; but as pointed out by Clare King the supposedly final version in the consultation seems to be missing many of the changes that the Board meeting approved.
It’s quite a long document, but let’s take one topical example – the proposed Cambridge congestion charge. Here’s what the strategy document said on the subject in the version presented to the Transport & Infrastructure Committee on 16 November (meeting agenda here; strategy document here):
Note in particular those last two sentences – “traffic restraint measures will be introduced” and they “will include road charging”. Not much room for compromise there. But this was toned down substantially in the version discussed at the Combined Authority Board meeting on 30 November (meeting agenda here; strategy document here). This time the document included tracked changes so that Board members could see what edits had been made:
This time the last two sentences are rather less definitive. Now the traffic restraint measures will only be “explored”, not “introduced”, and road charging in Cambridge is merely a possibility being considered, rather than something that will definitely be included. And, you might very well think, quite right too – a separate GCP consultation about the congestion charge has recently been completed, and it would be good to think that its outcome wasn’t entirely a foregone conclusion. This version of the Bus Strategy was duly discussed by the Combined Authority Board, and it was approved for a 6-week public consultation, running from 11 January to 22 February.
So you might reasonably expect that the version of the document in the consultation would be the one that the Combined Authority Board had approved. However, this seems not to be the case. Here’s the consultation web page, and here is the version of the strategy document it includes. How does the relevant paragraph look in this version? Here it is:
As you can see, it’s word-for-word identical with the original version, and completely omits all the changes in the version that the Board meeting approved. Traffic restraint measures are back to being “introduced”, not just “explored”, and road charging is no longer just a “possibility”, but once again something that the strategy “will include”.
It’s not just the paragraph on road pricing that’s undergone this reverse editing process. Here is another example, and comparing other parts of the three versions reveals more of the same. So I think we are entitled to ask, what is going on? Is this simply an unfortunate mistake, with the wrong version of the document being accidentally included in the consultation? Or has someone at the Authority decided that they preferred the earlier version, without bothering to ask our elected representatives to approve the change? And in any case, is it really a good idea for any version of this document to present road charging for Cambridge as a done deal, when there’s a huge public debate underway and an enormous consultation response still to be processed? I’ll look forward to hearing what the Combined Authority has to say.
Update: The Combined Authority has now tweeted to say that this was indeed a case of the wrong version of the document being uploaded. The version of the Bus Strategy document on the consultation website is now back to the version approved by the Combined Authority Board on 30 November.
Phil Rodgers 