ABSTRACT
Our purpose in this chapter is two-fold. One objective follows on from the theme of the last chapter and it is to examine whether and how local voting can be used to make observations about the national electoral mood. As we saw, there are many instances where local voting is dominated by local issues and local responses to national influences. That still leaves a great deal of behaviour which is national in orientation, with local voters using local elections as a vehicle to express their views about the wider political situation (Curtice and Payne 1991). The largest number of local elections occur, of course, in the first week in May but though these are plentiful they are only partly suited to our purpose. Although these election results can be used to note annual rises and falls in the performance of the parties, they offer few clues for election forecasting unless, as in 1983, 1987 and, perhaps 1991, a general election is thought to be imminent. Moreover, because they only take place once a year, they cannot help in the frequent mapping of trends in behaviour in a manner similar to that undertaken by opinion polls. What we require for this task is local votes which are cast throughout the year. That, in effect, means using the results from local government by-elections.
