Local elections 2018 guide: Which results to watch out for, how to tell who’s winning and how to make sure you have your say
MUCH of Britain goes back to the polls today - with thousands of council seats up for grabs.
The local elections will be the latest sign of whether Theresa May or Jeremy Corbyn is in the political driving seat, one year on from the General Election where the PM lost her majority.
Both parties have suffered bad publicity in recent weeks, as the Government has been criticised over the Windrush scandal and Labour struggles to tackle anti-Semitism.
So the two leaders will both be keen to put in a strong performance at the polls this week.
Where and when is it happening?
The 2018 local elections are taking place today, Thursday May 3 - polls opened at 7am and will close at 10pm, although if there’s a queue at the polling station you can still vote after 10 as long as you arrived before the deadline.
Around 150 councils are holding elections, with a total of 4,370 seats up for grabs.
Most of the local elections are focused in urban areas - Greater London, Greater Manchester, the Newcastle area, the Leeds region, and the West Midlands.
A number of smaller cities and towns such as Cambridge, Hull, Milton Keynes, Oxford, Plymouth, Reading and Southampton are also holding council elections.
And directly elected mayors will be chosen in four London boroughs and Watford.
The Sheffield city region - including Rotherham, Barnsley and Doncaster - will elect its first ever mayor, expected to be centrist Labour MP Dan Jarvis.
There are no votes in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland.
You can check if there are elections in your area by visiting
How can I take part?
If you are registered to vote, you should have already been sent a poll card through the post, telling you which polling station you must use.
Anyone who’s not sure if they’ve registered or not can contact their local authority to find out.
But if you’re not already registered, it’s too late - the deadline passed on April 17.
You don’t need your poll card to vote - in most areas, you can just turn up at the station and give your name and address.
But in a few areas - Bromley, Gosport, Swindon, Watford and Woking - a new trial programme means you should bring photo ID along with you or risk not being allowed to have your say.
So who’s going to win?
It’s likely to be a good night for Labour, since they tend to do better in urban areas than the Tories.
So even though the Conservatives are ahead in most recent surveys, they’re set to fall behind Labour on Thursday.
Election experts Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher have suggested on the basis of polls and previous trends that Jeremy Corbyn’s party will win around 200 more seats, with Labour losing around 75 councillors.
The Lib Dems are forecast to pick up a handful more seats - while Ukip could lose every single one of the seats they’re defending as voters desert the party in droves.
The way to tell which party has done best will be to compare this year’s results to what happened in the 2014 local elections - because that’s the last time this set of seats was contested.
What’s going on in London?
Every single council seat in London is going up for election - and Labour are hoping for big gains in the capital.
Mr Corbyn wants to capture a number of key councils from the Tories, including Barnet, Wandsworth, Westminster and even ultra-wealthy Kensington and Chelsea.
All four of the areas have been solidly Conservative for decades and their loss would be a blow for Theresa May.
The latest polls suggested that Labour will capture more than half the votes in London, their best result since 1971 - but fall short of their ambitions.
The party is currently forecast to take control in Barnet but lose out in the other three traditional Tory strongholds.
What other key seats should I look out for?
Labour are gunning for Trafford council, the only local authority in Greater Manchester which is currently run by the Tories - if they win it, they’ll have had a good night.
Plymouth is another Tory-held marginal which Labour will be keen to take to show they’re on a path to power across the nation.
And Ukip-dominated councils where the Tories are aiming to take charge include Great Yarmouth and Portsmouth.
The first results will start to come in around 12.30am tonight, then keep dribbling in throughout the night and into the morning.
We won’t have the final tally of councils won until at least 7pm tomorrow - 21 hours after the polls close.
But what does it all mean?
Obviously, the results of the local elections won’t have any formal impact on the balance of power in Parliament.
But if Labour do succeed in winning big, Jeremy Corbyn will feel he has the momentum to push on and position himself as Prime Minister in waiting.
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A Tory wipeout could even lead to fresh calls for Theresa May’s head - plunging the party into chaos as potential successors jockey for position.
By contrast, if the Conservatives manage to limit their losses, the PM will be able to argue that the Corbyn surge is overblown - and that his leftie fanbase online doesn’t represent the country as a whole.
The Lib Dems are desperate to improve their position so they can show their anti-Brexit message is cutting through to voters despite their feeble showing in most opinion polls.
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