Local election day
Election day, the highlight of the year for election anoraks (I generally explain it as the equivalent of the FA Cup final to non-political friends, the general election being the equivalent of the World Cup Final). There is little in the way of polling for today, since we will soon have some real results to look at. For the record this morning's YouGov poll for the Sun had topline results of CON 33%, LAB 39%, LD 10%, UKIP 13%. The six point Labour lead was the lowest since January, but I suspect it is just random movement around the reduced lead of 8-9 points we've seen lately.
The polls today close at 10pm, but don't expect lots of results this evening. Only six councils are counting their votes and announcing their winners overnight, and hence there will not be a full BBC election results programme overnight. Since am I invariably asked the question by lots of people for any election or by-election, there are no exit polls (exit polls these days really only happen for the general elections). The vast majority of councils will be counting during the day tomorrow, so expect results to begin appearing late morning and early afternoon. There are a couple of BBC hour long specials during the day at lunchtime, 2pm and 5pm and a Sky special in the evening.
I've already written my preview of the local elections here, also worth looking at is Lewis Baston's take here. For the intricacies of the BBC's National Projected Share and Rallings and Thrasher's Equivalent National Share this by Steve Fisher is worth reading (Steve also has a seat projection based on national polls here). Peter Kellner has also explored the possible results here.
Polling on local elections is a rare beast - the only recent poll of local election voting intentions (as opposed to general election voting intentions - they are often not the same thing) published ahead of the local elections was the ComRes poll yesterday, which I discussed here. It is worth underlining yet again that the ComRes poll was only of areas with local elections, so it won't be comparable to the "national shares" of the vote calculated by the BBC and Rallings and Thrasher. Today's elections are mostly in the shire counties, relatively Tory areas, so the figures in the ComRes poll are more Tory than the projections of the BBC and R&T which are adjusted to take account of all of those less Tory areas that aren't voting.
With all that said, good luck to any readers who are standing in elections today or helping out in them, and I am sure we will have things to say about the results over the weekend. Naturally the comments here will be open tomorrow for discussion as the results roll in.
UPDATE: For anyone staying up, here are the election results pages for those councils counting overnight: Dorset Essex Hampshire Somerset Lincolnshire Gloucestershire Hertfordshire (not sure the whole county is counting overnight)
