Psephology.AI

    Swing Explorer

    Pick a party, pick two elections, and see which areas moved — and by how much.

    Choose the comparison: Pick the area to look inside, the two election years to compare, and the party to follow. Only years with actual results in that area are offered.

    Level the seats: Votes are divided by the number of seats contested before shares are worked out, so a three-seat round doesn't dwarf a one-seat round. Scotland is left out of this step because it votes by a different system.

    Match the ward sets: Each area's two years are compared only on the wards that voted in both. The proportion matching is shown, and below 70% the change is withheld as a likely boundary change.

    Rank and drill: Child areas are ranked by change in percentage points. Any area with areas inside it can be opened to repeat the same comparison a level down.

    All insights

    Insight 5

    Swing Explorer

    Pick a party, pick two elections, and see which areas moved — and by how much.

    Live across England, Wales and Scotland

    Every other report answers a fixed question. This one lets you ask your own: any party, any two local election years, anywhere in the country, ranked from the biggest gain to the biggest fall, then drilled down ward by ward.

    Swing Explorer

    Choose a party, an area and two local election years. Everything inside that area is ranked by how far the party's vote share moved between them.

    Nothing to compare inside this area for the years chosen.

    How to read this

    • Swing here is in percentage points: the party's share in the second year minus its share in the first.
    • Click an area name to drop a level — region to council, council to ward — and the trail above steps back up.
    • Where fewer than 70% of the same wards voted in both years, the change is withheld because a boundary change makes it misleading.
    • This shows what moved, not why. A party that didn't stand a candidate looks the same as one that lost badly.

    Candidates who stood in both years

    People who stood in the same ward in — and — inside this area, ranked by how far their own share of that ward's vote moved.

    Nobody stood in the same ward in both of these years for this party.

    How to read this

    • Only people who stood in the same ward in both years appear — that's the only fair personal comparison.
    • The candidate figure is their own swing: their share of the ward vote in the second year minus the first, which strips out how many seats were up.
    • Names still going through identity checking are hidden by default and clearly flagged when shown.
    • A large positive swing can reflect the national mood as much as a personal vote, so read it alongside the party swing above.

    The terms used on this page

    Swing
    How much a party's share of the vote moved between two elections. The change in a party's share of the vote between two comparable contests, measured in percentage points. Full definition
    Baseline swing
    The same movement measured across the comparator group, for reference. The swing recorded by the same party across the comparator group over the same pair of contests. It stands in for the national or regional tide.
    Differential swing
    How far a place or candidate moved beyond the wider movement. Actual swing minus baseline swing, in percentage points. Positive is an over-performance against the comparator; negative is an under-performance. Elsewhere on this site it is called the bucking score.
    Comparator group
    The similar councils a result is measured against. Authorities of the same type on the same electoral timetable, used as the reference for baseline swing. Groups of fewer than ten authorities move easily and are flagged.
    Over-performance
    The party did better here than it did across similar places. A positive differential swing: the party's swing in this place exceeded the baseline swing of its comparator group.
    Under-performance
    The party did worse here than it did across similar places. A negative differential swing: the party's swing in this place fell short of the baseline swing of its comparator group.
    Consecutive over-performance
    The party beat the comparison at several elections running. An unbroken sequence of elections at which the party recorded a positive differential swing in the same place. The sequence only counts elections the party contested at both ends of a valid comparison; a missed contest or a boundary change restarts it.
    Uniform national swing
    The assumption that every area moves by the same amount. The projection method that applies one national swing evenly to every contest. Useful as a baseline; the exceptions to it are the subject of these reports. Full definition

    What the report does

    An interactive explorer rather than a fixed report. Choose a party, an area and any two local election years; the areas inside are ranked by how far that party's vote share moved between them. Click any area to drop a level — country to region, region to council, council to ward — or step back up through the trail. It reports what happened, not why.

    How it's built

    1. 1

      Choose the comparison

      Pick the area to look inside, the two election years to compare, and the party to follow. Only years with actual results in that area are offered.

    2. 2

      Level the seats

      Votes are divided by the number of seats contested before shares are worked out, so a three-seat round doesn't dwarf a one-seat round. Scotland is left out of this step because it votes by a different system.

    3. 3

      Match the ward sets

      Each area's two years are compared only on the wards that voted in both. The proportion matching is shown, and below 70% the change is withheld as a likely boundary change.

    4. 4

      Rank and drill

      Child areas are ranked by change in percentage points. Any area with areas inside it can be opened to repeat the same comparison a level down.

    How to read it (and how not to)

    • • It reports what moved, not why. A collapse can mean an unpopular party or simply a party that didn't stand a candidate that year.
    • • Local elections run on different cycles. Two years that suit one council may not overlap at all in another, which is why some rows read 'no election'.
    • • Ward boundaries change. Where under 70% of wards match across the two years, shares are still shown but the change is withheld.
    • • Scotland's single transferable vote is not directly comparable with first-past-the-post, so seat normalisation is not applied there.
    • • The candidate ranking only covers people who stood in the same ward in both years. Names still going through identity checking are hidden by default and flagged when shown.

    What it reads

    • • Ward-level results for every scheduled local election in the platform
    • • The area hierarchy: ward, council, county, region, country
    • • Seats-up counts per ward, so multi-seat rounds compare fairly
    • • Party records, so labels and colours stay consistent across years

    What you get back

    • • A ranked table of areas by change in vote share, biggest gain to biggest fall
    • • A grid view showing the same ranking as coloured tiles
    • • The full party picture for the chosen area across both years
    • • Ward counts and the share of wards common to both years, for every row
    • • Plain warnings where a comparison isn't safe, or where one of the years had no election
    • • A direct link from every row to that area's own page
    • • A candidate ranking for the chosen area: who gained and lost most personal support between the two years

    Readiness

    • Ward-level results across the hierarchy

      Queried live, so new imports appear immediately.

    • Duplicate area records excluded

      Stray duplicate council records are filtered out of every roll-up.

    • Candidate leaderboard

      Live, restricted to confirmed identities; unresolved names are flagged, not silently mixed in.