National polling and local results: an in-depth comparison for ‘Super Thursday’ 2021

National issues or local factors? Where the balance lies in influencing how people vote in local elections is widely discussed, but rarely agreed upon. As we reported in our previous ‘Super Thursday’ blogpost, research for this set of local elections by the University of Essex suggests that the pandemic will push local factors into the background.   So, can the Westminster voting intention opinion polls shed any light on possible outcomes […]

West of England Elections: what could happen on 2021’s ‘Super Thursday’

Mass UK elections during a global pandemic.  A Prime Minister fully recovered from the infection which has killed tens of thousands and who leads the Government to a strong performance at the ballot box. Labour only slightly increasing the number of seats it holds across the country.  A summary of the election results for ‘Super’ Thursday 6 May 2021? No – the election was 1918. Spanish Flu was the pandemic, David Lloyd George the PM and the Labour Party were only just starting to […]

All but extinct: West of England JSP Inspectors create crater in council plans

Yesterday, scientists in the USA declared that they had traced the worst day on Earth which took place 66 million years ago when a 12km-wide rock smashed into the planet. Whilst perhaps more understated, the West of England Joint Spatial Plan Inspectors’ ‘second letter’ hit the doormats of our four local councils and left a […]