Local Elections: Why No-one Gives A Monkey's

In a sense it says all that needs to be said about yesterday's local election that a man in a monkey suit is now Mayor of Hartlepool.

The election of a football mascot as mayor, like the election of the Kidderminster Hospital slate to run Wyre Forest (a council with no control over NHS issues) and, probably, like the election of three BNP councillors in Burnley, seems to be primarily a protest vote and rejection of the conventional political parties. So too, of course, is the depressingly low turnout. (In fact turnout was not as bad as most predictions had led us to expect, indeed up significantly on other recent local elections -- around 35% on the most up-to-date estimates as I write, compared to 28% in 1998, when this group of councils was last contested. But it is still far below the level at which those elected can claim much of a meaningful democratic mandate, and lower than almost anywhere else in Europe.)

Low turnout in elections follows naturally from low awareness of what councils do, and low perceived relevance, partly stemming from their inability to control their own budget. A MORI Social Research Institute survey for Green Issues Communications [Many Councillors 'Divorced' From The Electorate], carried out just over a fortnight ago, found a fair degree of ignorance about whether there were local elections at all. Even in areas where there were elections taking place, a quarter of the public thought that there were not or didn't know; in areas where there no elections, it is pretty clear that even though some were able to guess right, most people didn't have the faintest idea.

Q As far as you are aware, are there local elections in your area this May, or not?

Source: MORI/Green Issues Communications Base: 1,067 adults 15+ across Great Britain

Admittedly, 75% awareness in areas where elections were taking place is not disastrous (if we assume, as we probably should not, that nobody was guessing or only reminded of the existence of the elections by being prompted in the survey). But local government will never be taken seriously enough if people are only aware of it during an election campaign; the lack of understanding of the structure and electoral basis of their local government revealed by those people in areas without elections points to a major problem of disconnection between local councillors and their constituencies.

This is further emphasised by other questions in the survey. Barely a third of the public, 36%, claim that they know the name of one of their local councillors; and, indeed, two-thirds (67%) say they have never met their local councillor in person. Tellingly, neither of these figures varies much by class or education -- middle-class professionals are no more likely to have met or know the name of their councillor than C2s or DEs. Similarly, there was only a slight difference by newspaper readership.

This is rather in contrast to the pattern of knowledge of political figures at Westminster level. During the general election campaign last year, we asked the public whether they could name their MP: 41% could do so correctly (and 6% tried but failed), but in this case there was a very clear class differential, 53% of ABs but only 35% of C2DEs being able to come up with the right name. That the generally more politically literate middle class has no advantage of knowledge at local government level suggests the low priority that the public gives to politics at local level.

On the other hand, even for local government there is a distinct pattern of varied knowledge by age, with younger citizens substantially less likely to know the name of, or have met, their councillor; indeed, only 20% of 15-24 year olds say they know their councillor's name, but 45% of 45-54 year olds and 46% of the 55+ group claim to do so. This reflects the general pattern of interest in politics and public affairs, of course, but perhaps it also owe something to the erosion of the apparent importance of local government over the past few decades. The geographical pattern, as well, is clear, with both contact and knowledge much lower in London than the rest of the country.

Perhaps one reason is that many citizens draw a distinction between "the council" (i.e. the bureaucratic body that runs services in their area) and the councillors (i.e. the local politicians, mostly belonging to and running as the candidates of the not-universally-loved national political parties). When we asked who the public would go to for help or advice about a problem with a noisy neighbour, "the Council" tied with the Police in first place (each named by 41%); only 19% would consider going to their councillor.

Q1 If you had a problem in your local community with a noisy neighbour, which of the following would you consider asking for help or advice? Please mention all that apply.

Source: MORI/Green Issues Communications Base: 1,067 adults 15+ across Great Britain

But it is clear that what is also lacking is communication with potential voters. Just as we found in research at the general election last year, more of the public say that better information about candidates and issues would encourage them to vote than complain about other factors. A separate survey by the Local Government Information Unit for the Commission on Local Governance, with fieldwork by MORI Telephone Surveys, conducted in February and released this week, illustrates this clearly. Three in five of the public in England and Wales, 61%, said that "More information being provided about the candidates and their views" would make them more likely to vote, while only 2% thought it would have the opposite effect, and by 54% to 4% the public also thought "Having more information from the council about the election and how to vote" would help. Giving councils more scope to make important decisions locally also scored highly: "Councils having more scope to make decisions about what happens locally" would make 66% more likely to vote, and "Councils having more scope to set taxes and charges locally and decide how the money is spent" would do the same for 60%.

Changes in the voting method also seem to have less impact. Particularly intriguing in the MTS/CLG figures is the low priority the public puts on switching to all-postal voting: only 45% think they would be more likely to vote and 14% less likely to do so. Seemingly this is not something which, in itself, the public see as making much difference. Yet in practice it clearly does make a difference. Although turnout was up, slightly, across most of the country, it increased much more dramatically in those councils experimenting with an all-postal ballot.

There should be no particular surprise in this, since exactly the same was true in the smaller-scale pilot exercises carried out at the local elections two years ago. But it is worth asking why. Is it simply that postal voting is so much more convenient that significant numbers of voters who couldn't, or would find it difficult to, vote in person are re-enfranchised in this way? On the evidence of last year's general election, as well as the survey findings, it seems unlikely. That was the election at which "postal voting on demand" was available for the first time, but it seems to have done little for turnout -- all the evidence suggests that most of those who took the opportunity to vote by post were people who would have voted anyway. (See MORI's research for the Electoral Commission.)

The difference with all-postal voting is that full election details and ballot papers are delivered to every household; in a conventional election, electors would receive only a polling card telling them where the polling station is, and whatever publicity they receive from the candidates themselves. Parties are contacting fewer voters by canvassing and leafleting than used to be the case. In general elections, at least, they have the assistance of a free postal delivery to every elector or household -- all the parties have to do is supply the leaflets. But in local elections, they need somebody to do the hard work pounding the streets, pushing leaflets through letterboxes. So all-postal ballots are not simply making it easier for electors to cast their votes, they are ensuring much better coverage of basic information about the elections. Thus a change which, in itself, does not seem very important to the public has in fact had knock-on effects of very much greater importance.

The problem with local elections seems to be that the issues in question are not clear to voters. The majority, in fact, think that local elections do matter: 60% in the LGIU poll agreed that "The way people decide to vote in local elections is the main thing that decides how things are run in this area", while only 29% disagreed, a two-to-one margin. They even agree it makes a difference who gets in. But too many of them don't relate that abstract idea with the reality of turning out on the first Thursday in May and choosing between a Conservative, Labour or Liberal Democrat councillor. So many of them stay at home, and many of the others given the option vote for anti-party independents like the KHHC, or anti-establishment/anti-system extremists like the BNP. Or for the monkey. And to think that they used to say a few years ago that the way to get a monkey elected in Hartlepool was to stick a red rosette on it.