Cambridgeshire County Council chooses a new leader

Earlier today, Cambridgeshire County Council met for the first time since the local elections, and voted in Conservative Martin Curtis as its new Leader. This was despite the fact that the Conservatives no longer command an overall majority on the Council. Here’s a reminder of the balance of power after the elections on May 2nd:

The Conservatives now have 32 seats, with 37 non-Conservatives. Since there are 69 seats altogether, control of the Council requires a total of 35 seats, leaving the Conservatives three short. Technically, following changes brought in by the Localism Act 2011, former Council leader Nick Clarke also remained a councillor until his successor was appointed, despite having lost his Fulbourn seat. However, he took no part in the voting today.

There were three candidates for Council leader for councillors to choose from:

• Conservative Martin Curtis, of Whittlesey North, who was elected leader of the Conservative group ahead of Mac McGuire following Cllr Clarke’s defeat
• Liberal Democrat Maurice Leeke of Waterbeach, who recently replaced Kilian Bourke as leader of the Lib Dem group
• Independent John Hipkin, of Castle in Cambridge, leader of the four-strong group of Independent councillors

There were two rounds of voting, with the lowest-ranked candidate eliminated after the first round. Here’s how the voting went in the first round:

Cllr Curtis topped the first round with the support of the 32 Conservatives. Cllr Hipkin was second with the support of the 12 UKIP councillors in addition to the four Independents. Cllr Leeke received the votes of 13 of the Lib Dems – the other Lib Dem, Councillor Peter Downes of Brampton and Kimbolton, reportedly abstained because he felt the vote should have been a secret ballot. The seven Labour councillors also abstained.

With third-placed Cllr Leeke eliminated, voting went to a run-off between Cllrs Curtis and Hipkin. The votes were as follows:

The Lib Dems joined Labour in abstaining, meaning that Cllr Curtis was elected Leader by 32 votes to 16. However, Cllr Curtis will not enjoy the sweeping scope of action of his predecessor. The Council also voted for a change from the leader-and-cabinet system to a committee-based system, which will give councillors more power relative to the leader, and  a series of constitutional changes which will limit the Conservative’s control in the year until the new system comes in. There are some interesting times ahead.

North Cambridge traffic speeds – a first look

As part of the 20mph speed limit project, the City Council have collected a lot of data about current traffic speeds in north Cambridge, where the first phase of the project is due to be rolled out. Commendably, they have made this data available to anyone who wants it. There is an enormous amount of it – over 200Mb – giving a very detailed picture of traffic speeds in this part of the city. Here’s a first look at some of it.

There are broadly three categories of roads in the north area, shown on the consultation map [2.8Mb PDF] as green, blue, and dotted red. The green roads are A and B roads that will remain at 30mph; the blue roads, where most of the traffic is going to or from peoples houses – these typically already have slower traffic speeds. The dotted red roads are probably the most controversial – they have faster traffic, much of which isn’t immediately local residents, but they are being considered for 20mph limits. The maps [6.3Mb PDF] from the public exhibition posters show the current traffic speeds on all the roads – speeds were measured at each of these locations from 5th to 18th March. You may remember seeing the measuring devices around the north of the city. They can apparently record the type of each vehicle that passes as well as its speed.

Here are some graphs from some of the measuring points, showing the speeds of traffic (excluding cycles). First, Gilbert Road:

Almost all the traffic is going faster than 20mph, with nearly half the traffic travelling between 25 and 30mph. Of course traffic speeds vary with time of day and day of the week – the graph above gives a summary of the whole period that speeds were measured for. This graph shows the speeds measured between 8am and 9am (though this includes weekends as well as weekdays):

As you can see the speeds are noticeably slower, but still with the great majority of the traffic at over 20mph. In contrast, here is the graph for Akeman Street, a largely residential street with a row of shops in the same part of town, which has speed bumps:

Here the traffic is much slower, with most of it below 20mph.

One of the red dotted roads is Arbury Road, which had three separate speed measuring points. Here are the southbound speeds for the middle one, showing most traffic over 20mph:

Another red dotted road, Green End Road, is a good deal slower, with most traffic only a little faster than 20mph:

Finally, here is the fastest of the red dotted roads, Kings Hedges Road. Unfortunately it seems to have had only one measuring point, towards the Milton Road end:

Nearly half the traffic recorded was exceeding the existing speed limit of 30mph.

The City Council’s consultation is continuing until 5 July, and I’ll be writing more about the project in future posts.

Crime in north Cambridge

Cambridge City Council and Cambridgeshire Constabulary have recently published a neighbourhood update for the north of the city, which amongst other things gives crime figures for the wards in the north of the city. Here are the number of reported crimes in the first three months of 2013:

Arbury has a poor reputation for crime, but on this data at least it isn’t particularly justified. It has more shoplifting and robbery than the other wards, but lower levels of cycle theft, and few house burglaries.

East Chesterton suffered more than the other wards from burglary, and had a relatively high level of vehicle-related crime. However it has fairly low levels of shoplifting and robbery.

Kings Hedges has the worst crime record in the north of the city for this period, with violent crime and criminal damage featuring prominently.

Relatively affluent West Chesterton was the most law-abiding of the northern wards, with the lowest levels of violent crime and criminal damage, though it did have the most cycle theft.

Finally, here are the figures for reported anti-social behavior in the same period:

This time East Chesterton is the top of the league, with Arbury, despite its reputation, having nearly as low a level of anti-social behaviour as leafy West Chesterton.

Votes per seat in Cambridgeshire

In my previous article I discussed the way that voter turnout relates to local party campaigning in local elections, with voters more likely to go to the polls in marginal wards where the parties are mounting more vigorous campaigns. Of course, the first-past-the-post (FPTP) voting system encourages parties to concentrate on seats where they have a chance of topping the poll. But how well did the parties do at turning votes into seats? This graph shows the average number of votes per seat for each party across Cambridgeshire:

The Conservatives did best at turning votes into seats, winning 32 seats with their 59,129 votes. Although they lost ground this year, they needed fewer votes for each seat than in 2009, when they won 42 seats with 94,806 votes, an average of 2,257.

The Lib Dems did reasonably well in terms of votes per seat. Despite their support for proportional representation, they are ironically very good at fighting low-turnout FPTP elections, and are known for their effective targeting of resources.

UKIP needed an average of 3,094 votes for each of their 12 seats. To a large extent they were swept along by a wave of support that didn’t have much to do with local campaigning – they won several wards that they probably weren’t expecting to, where they had done little on the ground. It remains to be seen how well they can turn their sudden increase in support into an enduring campaigning capability.

Poor old Labour are propping up this chart, with only one seat for every 4,376 votes they received. Their main problem is that, outside Cambridge, their support is so widely distributed that they didn’t win any seats. They got nearly two-thirds of their votes from outside Cambridge, but all seven of their councillors were elected by Cambridge City wards. This is the opposite of the situation at Westminster, where FPTP gives Labour a distinct advantage due to the concentration of their voters across the country.

There were also four Independent councillors elected, but since they don’t form a party, their votes per seat aren’t really comparable.

Finally, here are the total votes across Cambridgeshire for the parties that didn’t win any seats at all:

Only the Greens are really in a position to feel hard done by, and given the current state of their party locally, it’s hard to see where their next council seat is coming from.

Turnout in Cambridge local elections

In the Cambridge local elections last week, just 31.3% of the registered voters went to the polls, with nearly 70% staying away. This is a pretty typical level of turnout in our local elections – here is the graph for the last few years:

One factor that clearly affects local election turnout is whether there are any other votes being held on the same day. In 2005 and 2010 there was a substantial increase in turnout because the local elections coincided with the General Election, and  a smaller boost in 2011 when the Alternative Vote referendum was held. The European elections in 2004 and 2009 gave a much smaller, but still detectable, increase in turnout. But in years when no other election is held on the same day, turnout is pretty consistently in the range 30-35%.

Another factor affecting turnout is the level of campaigning by the parties. If voters receive election leaflets and are canvassed by party activists, you would expect that they would be more likely to go and vote than if they hear nothing from their local politicians. Since parties tend to concentrate their efforts on the marginal seats, with less activity in the “safe” seats, we should be able to see this factor at work in the results. This next graph shows the turnout in each Cambridge seat this year, plotted against the majority in that seat:

Seats towards the right of the graph, such as Queen Edith’s and West Chesterton, had a higher turnout, whereas in those towards the left, such as Market and Kings Hedges, fewer voters went to the polls. Similarly, seats towards the top of the graph were won with a large majority, whereas those near the bottom had a closer result. So, is there really a correlation here? There are clearly two separate groups, the six “safe” seats at the top, and the eight more marginal ones at the bottom, but you have to squint pretty hard at this graph to see a strong correlation between turnout and majority.

When statisticians don’t get the results they are expecting, they look for what are called “counfounding variables” – other factors at work that interfere with the straightforward relationship that they were hoping to portray. But there actually is a pretty good candidate for a confounding variable here - the fact that turnout among students tends to be significantly lower than the rest of the population. Much of the student vote in Cambridge is concentrated in three wards, Castle, Market and Newnham. Here is the graph again with those three wards shown separately:

Now a more convincing picture emerges, with three distinct groups:

• the higher-majority, lower-turnout wards at the top left
• the lower-majority, higher-turnout wards at the bottom right
• the student wards

Market has the highest concentration of students in the city, and it duly produced the lowest turnout this year, despite being very closely-fought. Student turnout tends to be low for several reasons:

• young people in general have a lower turnout than older people
• many students feel less involved with local government than more permanent residents
• student residences tend to be inaccessible to local party campaigners – colleges do not allow them access to knock on students’ doors, and some colleges refuse to accept election leaflets unless they are individually addressed
• many students were away for the Easter vacation during much of the election campaign

In the non-student wards, however, there is a pretty clear correlation between turnout and majority, with all the “battleground” wards having higher turnout than the “safe” wards. But does this also hold in previous years? Well, up to a point. Here’s the graph for the 2012 local elections:

Again a bit of squinting is needed to see the correlation, but it is still there. Kings Hedges and Cherry Hinton are outliers, but the remaining non-student wards still form a high-majority, lower-turnout group and a low-majority, higher-turnout group. I’m sure political activists will be relieved to know that all that door-knocking and leaflet delivery is having a noticeable effect.

Cambridge Labour’s graphs and charts

Before the elections last week, the Cambridge Labour Party’s website featured this graph on its front page, showing Cambridge local election results over the last few years:

Following the elections, they’ve replaced it with a bar chart showing only this year’s results:

As political bar charts go, you have to give this one pretty high marks. It’s accurate – the numbers are correct; it’s fairly presented – the bars are all the right size; and it’s relevant. But why the change in style? Well, if Labour had simply updated their original chart with this year’s results, it would now look like this:

You can see why they didn’t stick with this presentation of the results – it gives the impression that the tide has turned in Cambridge and that the Lib Dems are set to recapture the lead by 2015. Of course, what is actually going to happen, only time will tell.

The prospects for the 2014 Cambridge City Council elections

With the County Council elections out of the way, the thoughts of many local party activists will  turn to visiting Reach Fair, having a bit of a rest, organising “Thank You” parties for election workers, and perhaps doing some work in their sadly neglected gardens. But in the longer term, they will  be starting to think about the prospects for next year’s City Council elections, when the Lib Dems are almost certain to lose control of the Council, and Labour very likely to take over.

The last City Council elections, in 2012, left the Lib Dems clinging to power in Cambridge by their fingernails. Here is the current makeup of the Council:

The 21 Lib Dems face 21 opposition councillors, but still retain effective control thanks to Mayor Sheila Stuart’s casting vote. However, the Lib Dems’ key problem next year is that they are defending eight more seats than Labour are.

Like many District Councils, Cambridge has one-third of its councillors elected each year, with a break in the fourth year when County Council elections are held. Councillors serve a four-year term. Here are the results of the last three City Council elections, which between them elected the current Council:

As you can see, more than half the present Lib Dem strength comes from their 11 councillors elected in 2010. The single Green seat from 2010 is now held by Labour, so they have three seats to defend next year. Here is the current makeup of the council again, this time with hollow blocks showing seats up for election in 2014:

Labour have a six-seat lead over the Lib Dems amongst the councillors not up for election next year. To retain control of the Council, the Lib Dems would need to win all eleven of the seats they are defending. Given the shift in political opinion since the General Election, this is next to impossible – it would require an extraordinary political earthquake such as Tony Blair somehow returning to power and launching another invasion of Iraq. Meanwhile, for Labour to take control, they only need to win six seats next year. In the County Council election this year they won seven.

Here’s how the City Council would look if this year’s election results were repeated next year. Labour would become the largest party, with a majority of four:

Since Independent councillor John Hipkin is (as far as we know) unable to clone himself, he will not be able to stand again next year, as he already holds the City Council seat he won in 2012. However, he might well support another Independent candidate in Castle ward.

What would the Lib Dems have to do to stop Labour taking outright control next year? Firstly, they would have to win the seats they won this year – itself no mean feat, particularly in East Chesterton and Romsey. Then, they would have to take at least two more seats that Labour won this year. An obvious candidate for one of these is West Chesterton, which the Lib Dems lost quite narrowly this year, but it is harder to see where the other is coming from – Kings Hedges, Arbury and Petersfield all seem out of reach now, despite the Lib Dems having sitting councillors in all three. (Castle is more winnable but wouldn’t help to stop Labour). Even if they did somehow manage to take  one of these, Labour would still have 21 councillors, equal to all other parties combined. However in this scenario the 21 non-Labour councillors could combine to elect a new non-Labour mayor on the outgoing mayor’s casting vote, depriving Labour of control. The Conservative and Independent councillors might well support such a move, as they would have a great deal more influence if there were no overall control, though they would undoubtedly want some concessions in exchange. This raises the intriguing possibility of John Hipkin returning for a second term as Mayor of Cambridge.

However, in present political circumstances it is much more likely that Labour will indeed take outright control next year, and that the Lib Dems will have to bide their time in opposition until 2015, when Labour will have eight seats to defend and very likely a General Election to fight on the same day.