Local elections vote shares: the measures used to project local votes nationally are better than looking at the number of seats won or lost, but local voting does differ from general election vote intention

Local elections often serve as fodder for media outlets and political pundits regarding national trends. Two slightly different indicators, the Projected National Share (PNS) and National Equivalent share of the Vote (NEV), are used to tell us how the parties are doing generally. Looking at these, Stephen Fisher finds that they track each other very closely, and that they tell a related but different story about party fortunes from general election opinion polls.