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Camden local elections 2006

To properly show the state of play between several parties, a simple two-way swingometer is inadequate. How would simultaneous swings from Labour to both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats affect the result?

The plots here show at a glance the state of play. Each circle corresponds to a ward. The three wedges are coloured to show the three councillors for that ward, and the dot in the centre shows the councillor who just missed being elected. The circles are placed according to the overall share of the vote in that ward in the 2002 local election. For example, a ward which is strongly pro-Labour is in the Labour corner of the chart.

A swing, if it's replicated across all wards, will have the effect of moving all circles by the same amount in the same direction. This lets us see at a glance which wards are vulnerable, and how big a swing is needed to change the overall result. The arrows show the swing from the 2001 general election to the 2005 general election, and the pastel circles show which councillors will be elected if this 2001–2005 national swing is applied to the 2002 local results.

The charts are in Adobe Acrobat format. The ward names are printed small; use the Search facility in Acrobat to find your ward.

Labour | LibDem | Conservative balance

[pdf]
This chart shows the relative share between Labour, Liberal Democrats and Conservatives. It also shows the impact of the 2001–2005 swing. Labour's big losses look set to be Kentish Town (to the Liberal Democrats), and Highgate and Bloomsbury (to the Conservatives and Greens). With these swings, the council will be
LabConsLibDemGreen
2002   351180
2006   2116161
However, this prediction assumes the same swing as we saw in the national elections 2001–2005. Since then, the Liberal Democrats have gone through a messy leadership election, and the Conservatives have chosen a more appealling leader. Some of the Liberal Democrat gains may go back to the Conservatives.

Labour | LibDem | Green balance

[pdf]
Do the Greens have a chance? They look set to gain at least one councillor, based on the strong showing by Sian Berry in the 2002 local election in Highgate. Sian will be contesting Kentish Town this year—perhaps she has a chance of swaying some Labour-defectors away from the Liberal Democrats. Generally, the Greens have to target dissatisfied Labour voters, since Liberal Democrats are less likely to switch to Green.

Resources

The data comes from Camden Council's Elections and voting website. I am very grateful for further explanations from Richard Lefley, the Elections Manager for Camden. The analysis is in R.

For code, see [analysis.R], [utils.R]. Data files are converted from [alldata.xls].

D.Wischikatcs.ucl.ac.uk