Much ink has been spilled in the noble cause of analysing this month’s election results. What can we learn from the ways in which people reported the elections and the narratives that emerged around them?
There was significantly greater focus on the local elections this year. It helps that there was no General Election and a couple of high profile mayoral races.
The bad news is that the vast majority of coverage treats local politics purely as a barometer of national politics: a canary in the mine for general elections. No one actually believes the share of votes cast across 124 councils in May 2016 is the same as the votes that will be cast in a General Election in May 2020.
