How to tell who's won the local elections

The expectations game ahead of the local elections is always good sport.

Last year, as it prepared to fight for council seats last contested in 2007, when it was a deeply unpopular administration, the party desperately tried to cool talk of a thousand gained seats. Their opponents said that really they should be hoping for even more.

This year it’s the same story. Labour is in a position to make sweeping gains as it contests a large number of seats won by the Tories at the height of their local popularity. There are fewer seats up for grabs but even so, the sources close to leader Ed Miliband quoted by the Telegraph last week who said the party’s target was for about 300 gains were being pretty fanciful.

Fortunately, we have the expertise of leading psephologists Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher to draw upon. When they wrote for us in late February, they set the bar for Labour at 500 gains. Having further analysed the parties performances in local by-elections since then, that figure still holds. It may be that gains of up to 700 seats may be necessary to demonstrate a clear lead over the other parties in popular opinion.

Subscribers can read both pieces in full here and here, the latter of which has a guide to the councils likely to change hands on 3 May.

Of course the spin doesn’t stop once the polling stations close. So having read their pieces, I thought I’d put together some ‘at a glance’ benchmarks to help readers decipher the post-game analysis on 3 May.

I should make clear that this is my take on the signals that will indicate who’s had a good night and who’s had a bad one, it is certainly not the ‘Rallings and Thrasher-endorsed’ guide to who’s won or lost the local elections.