(Originally published 25 March 2026, updated 2 April to correct a sentence in the rationale for the equal projected seat loss rates for the Conservatives and Labour. No change to the projected net gains and losses.)
Vote-intention opinion polls provided a rough guide to council seat net gains and losses last year. Reform, Greens and the Liberal Democrats were up in the polls, compared with four-years prior, and so made gains. Reform were up most in the polls and also made the biggest gains. Conversely, the Conservatives were down in the polls more than Labour were, and correspondingly lost more seats than Labour did.
What follows is not a forecast, but an analysis showing that Reform UK need to make at least +2050 net seat gains in the English local elections to show they are still performing as well as they did at last year’s local elections and +1935 to be on par with local by-election results since then. However, given that last year Labour lost seats to Reform at a faster rate than did the Conservatives and this year Labour are defending more seats, Reform could make as many as +2270 net gains without that necessarily indicating any significant progress in their ability to win council seats.
If the polls are anything to go by Reform should do even better this year than they did last year. Reform are up three points in the general election vote-intention opinion polls. More relevant, however, is the +26 points rise in Reform polling relative to four years ago when most of the seats up for election this year were last fought. That +26 is three points larger than the corresponding +23-point poll rise Reform were enjoying at the time of last year’s local elections relative to four years prior. Also, Reform have extended its poll leads over the Conservatives and Labour since last year both absolutely and relative to four years prior. On that basis, the polls suggest that Reform should exceed their local election performance from last year.
Last year’s local elections were extraordinary though. From practically a standing start, the net gains for Reform UK amounted to a record-breaking +41% of all the seats up for election.
If Reform repeat that scale of success this year they will make +2050 net seat gains from the 5010 or so seats that will be contested in the English local elections in May. That would comfortably beat the +1661 gains that Tony Blair’s Labour party achieved in England at the 1995 local elections.
Reform’s gains last year were also extraordinary relative to the previous failure for either Reform or UKIP to translate opinion poll strength into substantial numbers of council seat gains, as shown in the graph below. Most striking is the contrast between 2025 and 2024, when the +11.5-point rise in Reform polls (relative to the Brexit Party in 2020) yielded just two seats.
That Reform won 41% of council seats up with just 31% of the votes cast and an even lower 30% in the BBC Projected National Share (PNS) is unusual but not unprecedented. In 2019 the Conservatives won 42% of the seats with 31% of the vote and a PNS of 28%. Similarly, in 2010 Labour also won 42% of the seats with 32% of the vote and a PNS as low as 28%. Now that Reform is the most popular party in English politics, the electoral system works to the party’s advantage.
Reform gains last year overwhelmingly came from the Conservatives and Labour and barely at all from seats the Liberal Democrats or Greens were defending. While Reform gained 41% of the seats overall, roughly speaking (because of multimember wards) the Conservatives lost 48% of their seats to Reform, and Labour a massive 63%.
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