Marking your card for 7th May elections

In a little over a fortnight the UK will see the biggest set of elections this side of the next general election as voters decide who will make up the next Scottish Parliament, the Senedd in Wales and decide the futures for around 5,000 council seats across 136 councils in England. There will also be elections for a number of directly elected mayors.

With so many stories likely to come out of them, here’s my attempt as setting a marker for what to look out for.

Firstly, in Scotland, does the SNP manage to secure what would be just the second time any single party has achieved an outright majority in the Scottish Parliament?

Whilst the most recent More in Common MRP poll for Scotland suggests the party might just be short of an outright majority, it was only a few weeks ago that YouGov’s MRP poll suggested the SNP could be on course for a five seat majority.

If the SNP do repeat what Alex Salmond managed when leading the party at the 2011 elections to Holyrood, then expect the calls for a second referendum on Scottish independence to become loud, and difficult for the UK Government to resist. Afterall, in this case, voters would be endorsing a manifesto pledge by the SNP that an outright majority for the party should lead to a referendum on independence.  

In Wales, the open question is just how bad it will be for Labour. According to More in Common Plaid Cymru is on course to become the biggest party in the expanded, 96 seat, Senedd with 30 seats, followed by Reform UK on 28, Labour on 24, the Conservatives on 7, the Greens on 4 and the Liberal Democrats on 3.

At the end of March, YouGov’s MRP poll for Wales pointed to a more substantial lead for Plaid on 43 seats, with Reform UK on 30, Welsh Labour on just 12, the Greens on 10 seats and the Welsh Conservatives on just one seat.

Either way, don’t underestimate the hammer blow it will be to Labour to see the first non-Labour First Minister for 27 years, and the first time in around a century that Labour does not come first in any type of election in Wales.

Meanwhile, in England the question will be how will Reform UK and the Greens do in council elections, and how bad Labour and the Conservatives perform.

A frequently cited analysis by Professor Stephen Fisher of Oxford University projects Labour losing 1,900 council seats and the Conservatives losing 1,010. In contrast he suggests the Liberal Democrats could be up 200 seats, with the Greens adding 450 councillors to their current tally and Reform UK picking up a somewhat eye popping 2,260.

If the results were anything like this, don’t underestimate the psychological impact it will have on Labour in particular.

And finally, when sufficient results are through, watch out for the projected national share of the vote, the bit where the experts seek to project what the results would have meant had it been a general election.

After last year’s local elections, the projected national vote share put Reform UK on 30% of the vote, Labour on 20%, the Liberal Democrats on 17%, the Conservatives on 15%, the Greens on 11% and others on 7%.

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