Local elections, 2014

The United Kingdom's local elections are upon us once again; all day tomorrow, thousands of councillors will be up for election across the country. The regions that will be voting are: all London boroughs, all metropolitan boroughs, 74 second-tier district authorities and 20 unitary authorities; some new councils in Northern Ireland are also up for a vote this year. In addition to the local elections, the United Kingdom will also be participating in the European Parliament election, which occurs across the European Union every five years. For this post, I'll cover the UK's local elections only and will write about the European Parliament election tomorrow.

What is the predicted outcome of these local elections? The two ruling parties, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, which both form the coalition government in the UK Parliament, are again expected to lose councillors, much like they have done for the past two elections (the Liberal Democrats also lost councillors in 2011); the losses are again expected to be in the hundreds for both parties. Once again, the Labour Party is likely to be the biggest beneficiary of those seats; however, since 2013's locals the United Kingdom Indpendence Party (UKIP) has improved its standing among non-Conservative Party voters, which has made this batch of local elections harder to predict than the last. UKIP's gains can be attributed to significant public fatigue with the three main parties and their unwillingness to hold a referendum on the UK's membership in the EU.

As for some of the other parties, the Green Party of England and Wales seeks to increase its amount of councillors nationwide; the Greens are effective at winning small amounts of new councillors and have a good record of re-electing their existing ones. The British National Party, which was expanding and regarded as a problem five years ago, is as irrelevant in these local elections as it was in 2013's; the party is not expected to gain anything. There are also a few tiny regional parties and independents running in some areas; how these candidates perform is based on the strength and characters of the individuals themselves.

The next general election, when the UK Parliament itself will be up for a vote, will take place in May 2015. While council elections aren't always an accurate predictor of how the public will vote in a general election, they can indicate overall national mood; both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats will be in serious trouble in 2015 if their heavy losses continue.