Now that I’m writing a regular politics column for the Cambridge Independent, this poor old blog hasn’t been seeing very much action in recent months. On the other hand, having a print deadline does at least concentrate the mind enough to make me turn out an article once a month. But with my March column already being edited at Cambridge Independent Towers ahead of publication next week, I thought I would dust off this faithful old website and take a look at the prospects for the Police and Crime Commissioner elections which are now less than seven weeks away.
These Cambs PCC elections (I’m sorry, but there’s a limit to how many times I’m typing out “Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Police and Crime Commissioner elections”, and we’ve already reached it) are the fourth set to take place since the post was first established in 2012, but the first to be held under First Past the Post. Previous elections used the Supplementary Vote system, which gave voters a second choice vote if their first choice didn’t make it into the top two. However, following results such as Nik Johnson’s startling victory for Labour in the election for Combined Authority Mayor with the help of Lib Dem vote transfers, the Government has decided to get rid of the Supplementary Vote for Mayoral and PCC elections, and stick with First Past the Post instead. They have already been rewarded in contests such as the election for Mayor of Bedford last year, which the Conservative candidate won with 33.1% of the vote, edging out the Lib Dem on 32.8%, while the remaining third of the electorate, most of whom voted Labour, had no opportunity to express a second preference. Even before the Supplementary Vote was abolished, the Conservatives performed strongly enough in Cambs PCC elections to win all of them so far. However, Labour’s Nicky Massey ran them pretty close last time. She was 11.6% behind Conservative Darryl Preston after the first round, but second choice vote transfers closed the gap to just 5.5%. But without the Supplementary Vote, can Labour hope to make up enough ground this time to win? I have to say my initial gut feeling was, probably not. But after a more detailed look at the numbers, I’m not so sure about that.
As I write, three candidates have declared themselves for the 2024 Cambs PCC elections. The incumbent Conservative, Darryl Preston, is hoping for a second term of office. His Labour opponent is Anna Smith, who was unceremoniously ejected from the leadership of Cambridge City Council by her own party after the last local elections, but who already has a good deal of experience at the county-wide level thanks to being Deputy Mayor of the Combined Authority. The Lib Dems are represented by Edna Murphy, who sits for Bar Hill on the County Council. Other candidates could emerge by the time nominations close on April 5th, but they may well be deterred by the hefty £5,000 deposit required to stand. You only get this back if you receive at least 5% of the vote.
Looking at previous results in Cambs PCC elections, a few things jump out of the spreadsheet. The first is the relationship between the vote shares and the state of the national polls; the second is the potential impact of a Reform Party candidate, should one emerge; and the third is the effect on turnout of whether or not there is a simultaneous local election taking place. Let’s look at each of these in turn.
Quite a striking feature of the last two Cambs PCC elections is that all but one of the candidates received a vote share which was very similar to their party’s standing in the national opinion polls. The exception was the Lib Dem candidate, Rupert Moss-Eccardt, who in both 2016 and 2021 did substantially better than his party was doing in the polls, though he still finished in third place on both occasions. Here’s the result of the May 2016 Cambs PCC election, compared to the opinion polls at the time:
As you can see, everyone except the Lib Dem was within 1% of their party’s rating in the opinion polls of the time. Politically, of course, the national situation was very different to today – David Cameron was Prime Minister, and the Brexit referendum was just seven weeks away.
It was a fairly similar picture in the 2021 Cambs PCC elections, when Boris Johnson was Prime Minister and the nation was starting to emerge from the pandemic. Here’s the graph:
One again the PCC vote shares were very close to the national polls, except for the Lib Dem candidate. However, this pattern doesn’t hold if you go back to the very first PCC elections in November 2012:
On this occasion, in the third year of the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition government, the Conservative candidate Graham Bright managed a 7-point lead in the first round of voting, despite the Conservatives trailing Labour by 11 points in the national polls. However, the picture was complicated by the presence of two Peterborough-based Independents and an English Democrat on the PCC ballot paper.
What does all this tell us about the 2024 contest? Currently, the polls are showing some pretty massive Labour leads. Here’s the average of some recent national polls:
Clearly, if this year’s PCC election follows the pattern of the last two, then even allowing for the Lib Dems outperforming their national opinion poll rating, we can expect a comfortable Labour victory. However, if the Conservatives can repeat their 2012 trick of doing 18 points better relative to Labour in the PCC election than in the national polls, then it’s looking a lot closer.
A key factor in the election could be the presence or absence of a Reform Party candidate, who would be expected to take more votes from the Conservatives than from the other parties. However, so far I have seen no sign of one – the previous Reform candidate for Cambs PCC, Sue Morris, is the party’s prospective Parliamentary candidate in Peterborough this year. It’s possible that Reform may have been put off this time after winning just 3.5% of the vote in 2021, resulting in an expensive lost deposit – though their much improved standing in the polls suggests they would be likely to hold on to their deposit this time. While it’s hard to put an exact figure on it, no Reform candidate is good news for the Conservatives, while if one does appear, then Labour will be happier. We’ll have to wait until the candidate list is published in early April to find out.
Another factor which could affect the result is which council areas have other elections going on at the same time. I think it’s fair to say that the PCC elections have never really captured the imagination of the voters – in the first elections back in 2012, which were not held alongside any others, the turnout was a meagre 15%. Even in 2021, when the pandemic had deprived voters of a visit to the polling station the previous year, and all voters had Mayoral and council elections happening on the same day, overall turnout was just 37%. But perhaps the most interesting turnout figures are from the 2016 elections, when some council areas had elections on the same day and others didn’t. Here’s a graph of the turnout in each district then:
Looking at the graph it probably won’t surprise you to learn that it was Fenland and East Cambs which had no other elections on the same day, while the other four council areas did. Clearly, voters are more likely to turn out if they have a councillor to elect as well as a PCC – possibly because they are more interested in council elections, or perhaps because it just means there’s more campaigning going on. In any case, there is a noticeable effect on turnout. We have to make some adjustment for the fact that Fenland and East Cambs tend to have slightly lower turnout even when they do have a council election on the same day, but even taking this into account, it looks like only about two thirds as many voters will turn out for a PCC election alone, compared to when there’s a council election as well. This could matter this year, because Cambridge and Peterborough also have local elections on May 2nd, while the other four council areas don’t – and Cambridge and Peterborough are Labour’s strongest areas. If you take the 2021 result and adjust it accordingly, this effect is worth about four percentage points to Labour – not a huge number, but possibly crucial in a close race. You can find the details of how I calculated this in this spreadsheet.
What other factors could influence the outcome? Traditionally, the Conservatives have scored better on law and order than on some other policy areas – but YouGov’s tracker poll suggests that Labour have recently overtaken them even here. Is the change of electoral system going to affect voter behaviour? I really don’t see this making a big difference – tactical considerations have never played much of a part in PCC elections.
So what’s the bottom line? I started off with my gut feeling saying that Darryl Preston was probably going to hang on, but looking at the numbers it’s pretty hard to sustain that. What’s the worst that could happen for Labour? The national polls might tighten; Reform might decide not to run a candidate; a burst of enthusiasm for PCC elections might keep the turnout up in the less Labour-friendly areas. But even assuming all this, I think the Conservatives are so unpopular nationally at the moment that, given a largely consequence-free way of kicking the Government, that’s what voters are going to do. So I think Labour are now in pole position to win the Cambs PCC vote – and it’s likely that Anna Smith will be a lot happier after this year’s elections than she was after last year’s.
Phil Rodgers 