This paper explores satisfaction with the political domain of local government performance, using survey data from a contemporary British city as the empirical context. It employs a factor‐augmented ordered logit analysis of data emerging from a representative city‐wide series of over 1,000 household interviews. Affective reactions to local economic performance and policy effectiveness are constructed in the spirit of the approach used in earlier work by social scientists. The key significant influences that raise or depress satisfaction at this geographical level are presented. Affective reactions to past policy and the economy are both shown to be statistically significant, but with reactions to the economy being negative while those for other policy reactions seemingly positive.