“The Tories were not far enough ahead in the mayoral and GLA vote to convince me that they could win here on a general election turnout.”

That’s just my point!

Shaun will perform much better than here than Boris.

The fact that Boris won here, suggests that Slaughter is in real trouble.

“Shaun will perform much better than here than Boris.”

Extremely unlikely in a general election

I think that bailey is a refreshing candidate but Slaughter wil fight this one very and given his incumbency, experience as councillor and the fact that the Tories were only slightly even in such a very good year for them nationally means that a Lab hold is more likely than a Con win.

The chance of a recount is probably greater than 50%.

“I think that bailey is a refreshing candidate but Slaughter wil fight this one very and given his incumbency”

Andrew Slaughter has limited incumbancy here, as most of his seat (with the exception of Shepherds Bush) forms Ealing Central & Acton. More of he new seat comes from Greg Hands ‘Hammersmith & Fulham’, with Tory incumbancy. The Tories also dominate the area on Hammersmith & Fulham council and must have won on the new constituency boundaries in 2006 by a larger margin than the GLA polls last month.

Peter,
The Tories dont ‘dominate’ this new seat in fact it is evenly matched with all Lab councillors on H&F council coming from this seat 13 and with 16 Conservatives. Also the parts being transfered from Greg Hand’s old seat are not uniformally conservative. For example Hammersmith Broadway is reprsented by a full slate of Labour councillors and other wards will be keenly fought. Slaughter can rely on votes from Lab wards such as Shepereds Bush, White City, Askew and College Park/Old oak and Hammersmith Broadway. That means a Con win is not by any means a foregone conclusion. The Whitmore and White city ward is monolithically Lab in 2005 Lab got triple the number of Con and Lid dem votes. So this seat will be very close.

Joe James B
Twickenham (& Richmond Park,Windsor)
It doesn’t necessarily follow although it’s usually a reasonable point re mid terms.
In May 1994, an awful year for the Tories, Labour polled 41.5% in London, but continued to surge to 49.5% in 1997, taking many seats not won in 1994 - not just the quirky Brent North, and the seats where there is an inbuilt difference such as those in Wandsworth, but Harrow seats, Ilford North, and Southgate.

2008 showed Labour still doing much better in London than nationally, despite Ken’s defeat. If Shaun can continue to build up his campaign over the next two years, I think he can win here.

June 13th, 2008 at 5:56 pm

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I agree, if we had used the ‘mid term’ 1994 Wandsworth Borough Council Election results to predict the 1997 general election in Wandsworth, the Tories would not only have held Battersea and Putney but gained Tooting.

While I see where other bloggers have come from, the principal that 2006 and 2008 London local elections are the Tories peak and a ‘modest margin of Tory victory’ would leave the Hammersmith seat open to any Labour Government recovery as we leave ‘mid term’.

I recall, that in 1995 that Edinburgh Pentlands and East Renfrewshire (Eastwood) went on the knife edge between the Tories and Labour (0 - 2% in each case) and the logic was that the Tories must hold both these seats in 1997 as the Tories ‘do better’ as we leave ‘mid term’!!!

The Tories lost in Eastwood by nearly 4000 and in Pentlands by nearly 5000, so its possible to do even worse that in the ‘mid term’ local elections.

I think Bailey will do even better that the Tories in the local elections, 2000 - 4000 Con maj.

Yes, I may be wrong but I seem to recall that in Wolverhampton South West the local elections between 1993 and 1996 only had Labour slightly ahead which gave the Tories hope that Nick Budgeon would be able to hold on in 1997. In fact I think he lost a lot more badly than even the mid-term elections implied.

The think abuot Wandsworth though is that the Conservatives have consistently overperformed there since 1990 (arguably since 1986). In Wolverhampton also the Conservatives did well in local elections in the early 90s. IN 1995 they held Graisely - an inner city ward they didnt even come close to winning this year. In those areas identified where the Conservatives did worse in 1997 than in the previous set of local elections there were usually particular local reasons why the Tories did better in those local elections. This is also the case in eg Brent North.
For the parallel to work then you would have to argue that somehow Labour performed unusually well in this seat in the 2006 local elections and this is patently not the case.

It is arguable though that Labour did better than expected in highly non-white areas by race baiting. If Boris doesn’t turn out to be as bad as he was claimed to be by Labour then there could be a pro Conservative swing in 2010 relative to 2008.

The thing that marks out the 2008 Mayoral elections from previous mid-term local elections is turnout. Mid term elections are often unrepresentative of General Elections because turnout is so low in the former.

Typically, turnout in this part of West London in local/Mayoral/European elections has been in the order of 35-40% over the last two decades. For example, turnout in the 2005 Council elections in the wards making up the new Hammersmith seat was only 38%. The Tories beat Labour in those wards in 2005 - but they could not rely on this as any indication of what will happen at a General Election because a lot more less motivated Labour voters will turn out for a parliamentary election.

This pattern changed in 2008. At these Mayoral/Assembly election, turnout in the new Hammersmith seat soared to 47%. This is not so far off local General Election turnouts. For example, at the the last two General Elections, turnout in Ealing Acton & SB was 52% and 56% respectively.

The 2008 GLA election - which is the second election in a row where Labour has been beaten in the new Hammersmith seat - is perhaps a better indication of local election results than the 2005 local elections. Moreover, the swings (local election to local election and Mayoral to Mayoral) are all going one way … and they are big enough to unseat Labour here.