Political parties will cherry pick the most favourable data when this year's local election results land - here's Sky News' guide to understanding the numbers to help you see through their damage limitation efforts.
Q: Labour is saying a good night for them would be then gaining 400 seats. How does that fit in the benchmarks that you've done?"Well, I think that's a very modest claim and given two things. Number one is where Labour currently is in the polls - it's at 43%.
Q: Often, you hear Labour politicians making the argument that these are not elections happening in their heartlands. These local councils, often shire councils, are not traditional places where Labour has a strong vote - how much validity is there in that?"That really, if you like, misses the point about the whole exercise of using local elections to calculate a national vote share. Because we take all of this into account.
And for that reason, it doesn't really matter where the elections are, because we're looking at changing vote share."Amanda Akass explained everything you need to know about local elections. "And then for that reason, if Labour in 2023 is doing much, much worse than Labour did in 1995, then it stands to reason that quite frankly, they're not in a good position to win the next general election."
Q: The Conservatives say a six or seven-point gap behind the Labour party would be a good night - being less than the polls suggest. Is that a fair benchmark to use?"Well, if we think about the national equivalent vote share from last year, it was 35% for Labour and 33% for the Conservatives.
Professor Thrasher and his colleague Professor Colin Rallings have drawn up this guide for how to judge the results of the main political parties:How to cut through election night spin1000+ losses: A bad night with a third of all seats defended lost. Tory MPs in marginal 'red wall'750 losses: A clear swing to Labour but rather less than opinion polls imply
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