Rich pickings for election obsessives this week. We had a bumper crop of local contests yesterday: 12 in total. I’m going to save most of them for a later post,…

This week’s local by-elections were both tidying-up exercises following last month’s nationwide contests. Neither result has altered the balance of power on the councils in question. But in both cases…

Some cheer for the Conservatives last night: they made two gains in this week’s local council by-elections. The first was a seat on East Cambridgeshire district council, which the party…

Three local by-elections this week, all won by independents – in two cases, at the expense of other independents. One seat was up for grabs on Rother district council in…

You might have missed it, but there was another by-election on Thursday. It got somewhat overshadowed by the one in Newark, which is perhaps understandable. But in its own way…

Last week’s local elections accelerated the Conservative party’s disappearance from most of metropolitan England. An end point of sorts has been reached in some parts of the country, where there…

Around 9pm yesterday evening, over 100 hours since polls closed, the result for the Bromley South ward in Tower Hamlets was announced. It brought to an end the longest count…

All the results from Thursday’s local elections are finally in*. Here’s precisely how Ukip has done: Expressed as a percentage, Ukip now holds 2.15% of the seats on councils where…

One of the first books I encountered when I started my A-level history course at school was by George Dangerfield. Its title was so punchy and intriguing that it has…

Not very well. Here’s the chart I compiled of the 20 councils it should have been easiest for Labour to win on Thursday: And here’s how the party actually did: