A Little Local Problem — A Review Of The May Local Elections
The 2006 local elections represent a clear and embarrassing defeat for Labour. The party was relegated to third place in terms of the "estimated national equivalent vote share", (the generally accepted measure of the major parties' local election performance), with only 26% of the vote. It made a net loss of more than three hundred seats, and controls 18 fewer councils than it did before the elections. While this was not, as some had predicted beforehand, Labour's worst-ever local election performance — in fact, the 26% share was the same as in 2004 — it was a very poor one.
