Birmingham is going to the polls on 7 May, and things look dire for Labour.
How bad exactly? The Birmingham Mail recently published research from "audience insight specialist" firm Bombe which made a truly apocalyptic prediction: Labour winning just 11 out of the 101 seats up for grabs.
Bombe is a relative newcomer, and not a member of the British Polling Council, so that figure should be treated with a huge degree of caution, especially as their forecast isn't from direct polling — it comes via a machine learning model that 'predicts' voting behaviour based on existing polling data. So things may not be quite that dreadful. But that’s scant comfort for the party that has long ruled Birmingham.
It faces a perfect storm: terrible national poll ratings, local anger over bankruptcy and bin strikes, and the risk of haemorrhaging votes in both directions: to Reform on the right as well as the Greens and independents to the left.
No votes have been cast yet and things may change in the coming weeks, but here is the breakdown, in maps and charts, of what’s going on under the surface.
A long way to fall
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