Local Electioncast: The Preview

Newscast

BBC

Politics, News

4.4 • 6.4K Ratings

🗓️ 25 April 2025

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Today, we’re looking ahead to local elections taking place in England on Thursday 1 May.

Adam and Chris are joined by friends of the podcast Matt Chorley and Professor Jane Green, Director of the Nuffield Politics Research Centre at the University of Oxford, to discuss the upcoming local elections, and tips for interpreting the results.

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New episodes released every day. If you're in the UK, for more News and Current Affairs podcasts from the BBC, listen on BBC Sounds: https://bit.ly/3ENLcS1 Newscast brings you daily analysis of the latest political news stories from the BBC. It was presented by Adam Fleming. It was made by Miranda Slade with Shiler Mahmoudi. The technical producer was Jack Graysmark. The assistant editor is Chris Gray. The editor is Sam Bonham.

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.
0:05.0	Chris, hello.
0:06.0	Hi.
0:07.0	Do you remember the other day there when we're on Radio 2?
0:09.0	And I said, are we calling these elections Superish Thursday?
0:12.0	Oh yes.
0:13.0	Not quite.
0:14.0	I did.
0:15.0	And I suddenly thought, oh gosh, have I sounded quite sort of like I'm talking,
0:18.0	talking things down?
0:20.0	But actually since then, Adam, I have got my
0:22.2	Adam Fleming-esque ringbinder of local election printouts of various things that I keep
0:27.9	stumbling across online that I thought I ought to read, briefings and articles and sophologists,
0:33.7	these election experts writing their projections and all the rest of it. And you know, it's a relatively
0:37.8	small set of elections, these. And that's not to denigrate the importance of the contests in the
0:43.0	places where they are happening. But for plenty of newscasters, you'll be thinking, well, there's
0:47.5	no elections around my way. And you'll be right. These are contests electing about 1,700
0:52.3	councillors in 24 councils.
0:55.7	And to give you a comparator at the local elections last year,
0:58.8	the local elections, as opposed to the German election,
1:01.2	it was 107 councils and 2,500 councillors.
1:04.6	And in 2023, it was 8.5,000 councillors.
	...

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