Governing parties almost always lose ground halfway through. This year may be different.
The rule of thumb in the corridors of the Assembly is that a governing party loses about five seats at the mid-term by-elections and council polls, give or take a couple, and that nothing it does in the first two years makes much difference. Like most rules of thumb, it is roughly right and frequently misleading. But a look back over the nine mid-term contests since the Assembly first sat suggests that the pattern holds more often than politicians would like to admit – and that this year’s contest has features that could break it.
Mid-term contests in the region take two forms. There are the scheduled council elections, held halfway through each Assembly term, which are widely read as a referendum on the government. And there are by-elections, called whenever a member dies or resigns, which tend to cluster in the middle of a term as long-serving members step down. Together, they produce the swing that the rule of thumb describes.
Nine contests, one pattern
In eight of the nine mid-term rounds since the Assembly was founded, the governing party or coalition lost ground. The heaviest defeat came in the third term, when the then governing party lost 140 council seats and four Assembly by-elections in a single spring, a collapse driven partly by an unpopular decision to close two hospital wards in Harrow. The smallest came in the fifth term, when losses were limited to a dozen council seats and a single by-election, at a time when the economy was growing strongly and the opposition was divided.
The one exception came in the seventh term. That year, the governing coalition actually gained council seats, helped by a successful flood response the previous winter and an opposition leadership contest that ran for most of the campaign. Political scientists still argue about whether that result was a genuine endorsement or simply the absence of an alternative.
“Voters use the mid-term to send a message without changing the government. They know the Assembly will not fall, so the cost of a protest vote is low. That is why governments almost always lose, and why the size of the loss matters more than the fact of it.”
That analysis comes from Professor Lionel Ashcombe, who has studied regional voting patterns at Calder University for three decades and maintains the most complete database of the region’s election results. His figures show an average mid-term swing against the government of 4.7 percentage points, with turnout typically falling by between eight and twelve points compared with the general election.
Why the losses happen
Several explanations compete. The first is simple disappointment: governing parties make promises that cannot all be kept within two years, and voters notice. The second is turnout. Governing parties tend to rely on supporters who turn out in general elections but stay at home in mid-term polls, while opposition voters are more motivated. The third is local. Council elections are fought partly on bins, potholes and planning, and a governing party at the regional level often controls the larger councils, taking the blame for unpopular local decisions as well.
History also shows that losses are not always permanent. In four of the eight cases, the governing party recovered enough at the following general election to remain in power, sometimes with a larger majority. Mid-term defeats have often served as warnings rather than verdicts, prompting reshuffles, policy changes or, in two cases, a change of leader.
Why this year may be different
Three factors suggest this year might not follow the pattern. The first is the shape of the Assembly itself. With 61 seats and no party holding more than 24, the government is already a minority arrangement relying on smaller groups and the two independents from the hill towns. Voters cannot easily punish a single governing party when power is so dispersed, and early polling suggests the swing may be shared across all the larger groups.
The second is the timing of the Valley Line reopening and the new schools capital fund, both of which deliver visible results in marginal wards just before polling day. Governments in earlier terms rarely had such tangible achievements to point to at the halfway mark.
The third is the opposition. The main opposition party has struggled to settle on a clear message and remains divided over the congestion charge, the issue that dominated the last general election. If the seventh-term exception was built on a distracted opposition, this year’s conditions look similar. Whether that is enough to defy four decades of precedent will become clear in May, when the polls close and the counting begins at the Calder Exchange.
