(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%.
Updated with all of Thursday’s election results in. That is 23 councils, 1639 seats across 1399 wards/county electoral divisions, 6 directly-elected mayoralties, and 1 parliamentary by-election.
Verdict:
Extraordinary for Reform, good for the Liberal Democrats, mixed for Greens, bad for Labour, and extremely bad for the Conservatives.
The graph below gives you a sense of how dramatically things changed this year. For an explainer of the PNS see here.
Reform UK:
Top of the poll, with 30% in the BBC Projected National Share (PNS) of the vote, up from just 2% in last year’s local elections (due to not fielding many candidates in 2023). Reform comfortably beat UKIP’s best result of 23% in 2013.
Won control of +10 councils, despite starting with no seats at all: Derbyshire, Doncaster, Durham, Kent, Lancashire, Lincolnshire, North Northamptonshire, West Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire, and Staffordshire.
Largest party on a further 4 councils that are “No Overall Control”, so 14 out of 23 in total: Cornwall, Leicestershire, Warwickshire, and Worcestershire.
Won the popular vote in 14 authorities.
Won the Runcorn and Helsby parliamentary by-election, albeit by just 6 votes, with a 17-point swing. Overturning a majority 34 points or more has only happened in 17 previous by-elections.
Won 677 council seats: 41% of the total.
Won the Greater Lincolnshire and Hull & East Yorkshire mayoralties, and came a close second in Doncaster, North Tyneside and the West of England
One of the highlights of the BBC’s coverage of local elections is the Projected National Share (PNS). This is an estimate of what the GB share of the vote would have been if (a) local elections had been held everywhere, (b) the outcome where there were no elections mirrored the pattern where there were, and (c) the principal parties contested all the seats.
The aim is to provide a summary statistic that is comparable across local election years irrespective of the particular mix of places that have local elections in any particular year, a mix that varies considerably from year to year.
This year’s local elections, for example, take place primarily in rural shire county England. Most of them are places that vote Conservative in especially high numbers. In the general election last July, for example, the Conservatives were neck and neck with Labour rather than 11 points behind. They are also places that voted more heavily for Leave in the 2016 referendum. The PNS is designed, among other things, to remove this unrepresentative character.
However, there are a number of key challenges that make it particularly difficult to calculate a PNS for this year’s elections. In this blog we outline those challenges and explain how we are addressing them.
In recent years, changes in vote-intention opinion polls have generally provided a reasonable guide to headline gains and losses at local elections. Most of the seats up this year were last fought in 2021. Table 1 shows how party support in the opinion polls has changed since then. Reform UK are ahead, just, and never before in England has vote intention been so evenly divided between five parties.
Table 1. Opinion poll changes from 2021 locals to 2025 locals (GB)
%
2021 polls
2025 polls
Change
Con
41
23
-18
Lab
36
24
-12
LD
7
13
+6
Reform
2
25
+23
Green
5
9
+4
How might these changes translate into net changes in local council seats?
What we know at 8.20pm on Saturday 4th May 2024, after 106 out of 107 councils, 2640 councillors, 11 Mayoralties (including London and estimated West Midlands result), 35 out of 37 Police and Crime Commissioners (PCC), the Greater London Assembly (with all votes declared but not the D’Hondt allocation), and 1 parliamentary by-election. Just 1 council and 2 PCCs to declare.
Verdict:
Extremely bad for the Conservatives. Good for Labour and Lib Dems. Very good for Greens. Mixed for Reform UK.
Conservatives:
Dropped to 25% in the BBC Projected National Share (PNS) of the local election vote: their joint lowest since records began in 1982
Lost control of 10 councils out of 16 they were defending: Adur, Basildon, Dorset, Dudley, Gloucester, Havant, North East Lincolnshire, Nuneaton & Bedworth, Redditch and Rushmoor.
– 473 net council seat losses: 48% of the 986 they defended, leaving them behind the Liberal Democrats in total seats won.
Won only 1 of the 11 directly elected Mayoralties, with Andy Street narrowly losing the West Midlands and Ben Houchen suffering a 17-point swing to Labour in Tees Valley.
Lost 10 of the 27 Police and Crime Commissioners they defended, with an average drop in vote share of 8 points across the 27.
Lost the contest for London Mayor with a 3-point drop in their share of the vote.
Lost 1 seat in the Greater London Assembly after a 3-point drop in their London-wide list vote.
Lost the Blackpool South by-election on a 26% swing (the third biggest by-election swing in the post-war period).
Labour:
First place with 34% in the BBC Projected National Share (PNS) of the local election vote: down 1 point on last year, but another 9-point lead over the Conservatives. Not as good as Labour achieved before their 1997 victory, but better than at any set of local elections where they went on to lose the general election.
+8 net gains in council control. Gained 10 (Adur, Cannock Chase, Hartlepool, Hyndburn, Milton Keynes, Nuneaton & Bedworth, Redditch, Rushmoor, Tamworth and Thurrock), but lost Kirklees and Oldham. Retained control of a further 40 councils.
+185 net council seats gains
Won 10 of the 11 directly elected mayor positions, including West Midlands from Andy Street and London, that is all but Tees Valley which Labour failed to take despite achieving a 17-point swing there.
+10 gains of Police and Crime Commissioners, and held all 10 of those they were defending. Average vote share increase of +8 points across all 35 contests.
Won the London Mayor contest for the third time in a row, with an increased vote share of +4-points.
Maintained their position as largest party in the Greater London Assembly with 11 out of the 25 seats.
Won the Blackpool South by-election on a 26% swing (the third biggest by-election swing in post-war period), in line with other big by-election wins for Labour this parliament.
Liberal Democrats:
Gained control of Dorset and Tunbridge Wells and held all 10 councils they were defending.
+104 net council seat gains, winning 521 seats in total (more than the 513 secured by the Conservatives).
Increased vote share +3 points on average across the Police and Crime Commissioners, despite the change in the electoral system creating incentives for their supporters to vote tactically away from them in most places.
Maintained their position in the Greater London Assembly with 2 seats.
Green Party:
Secured their best local elections performance ever (better than 2019): enough to put them at 13% in the local elections Projected National Share (PNS)
+74 net council seat gains, winning 181 seats in total
Averaged 15% across the 7 Police and Crime Commissioner positions they stood for, despite the change in the electoral system creating incentives for their supporters to vote tactically for others
Maintained their position in the Greater London Assembly with 3 seats.
Reform UK:
Came 3rd on 17%, narrowly behind the Conservatives, at the Blackpool South by-election.
Won just 2 council seats out of 2640 up for election.
Averaged 12% of the vote, in the wards they contested, but they contested just 12% of seats.
Put in a much more limited effort and much less impressive performance than UKIP did in local elections between 2013 and 2016.
1 seat on the Greater London Assembly with 6% of the vote.
See analysis by John Curtice and the rest of the BBC team for further detail.
What we know at 8pm on Friday 3rd May 2024, after 1 by-election, 98 out of 107 councils, 2199 councillors, 4 Mayoralties, and 27 out of 37 Police and Crime Commissioners declared so far.
Bad for the Conservatives. Good for Labour and Lib Dems. Very good for Greens. Mixed for Reform UK.
Conservatives:
Lost the Blackpool South by-election on a 26% swing (the third biggest by-election swing largest in post-war period).
Lost control of 8 councils net (Adur, Basildon, Dudley, Havant, North East Lincolnshire, Nuneaton & Bedworth, Redditch and Rushmoor), out of 13 defended
Lost 424 council seats net, out of 877 defended and declared so far
Won only 1 of the 4 directly elected Mayoralties declared so far
Lost 9 of the 21 Police and Crime Commissioners defended and declared so far, with an average drop in vote share of 9 points
Labour:
Won the Blackpool South by-election on a 26% swing (the third biggest by-election swing largest in post-war period).
Gained control of 8 councils net (gains were Adur, Cannock Chase, Hartlepool, Hyndburn, Milton Keynes, Nuneaton & Bedworth, Redditch, Rushmoor, Tamworth and Thurrock, but lost Kirklees and Oldham)
Gained 169 council seats net
Won 3 of the 4 Mayoralties
Gained 9 Police and Crime Commissioners and held all 5 of those they were defending, with an average vote share increase of +8 points
Liberal Democrats:
Gained control of Tunbridge Wells and held all 10 councils they were defending
Gained 79 council seats net
Increased vote share +5 points on average across the Police and Crime Commissioners declared so far
Green Party:
Gained 60 council seats net
Increased vote share, averaging 13 points where they stood, despite also contesting more seats than before.
Averaged 8% in the 3 PCCs they contested that have declared so far
Reform UK Party:
Came 3rd on 17%, narrowly behind the Conservatives, at the Blackpool South by-election
Won just 2 council seats out of 2160 declared so far.
Averaged 12% of the vote, in the wards they contested. That is up 6 points on last year, but they contested just 12% of seats.
Put in a much more limited effort and less good performance than UKIP in local elections before 2015.
See analysis by John Curtice and the rest of the BBC team for further detail.
Seats won and lost in the local council elections in England this week may be a poor guide as to how well the parties performed. Since the elections are held under single or multi-member plurality, without any increase in support a party may make big gains in seats off the back of another party losing votes. A third party whose vote is geographically spread may make a substantial advance in votes yet reap little reward in terms of seats. Meanwhile, seats won and lost only provide an indication of whether a party has lost or gained ground as compared with when the seats up for grabs were last contested.
These caveats are important again this year. Around 70% of the council seats up for grabs this year were last fought over in May 2021. Boris Johnson was Prime Minister and the Conservatives were successfully claiming the credit for an early Covid vaccine rollout. The party enjoyed a six-point lead in the polls, gained over 200 seats in the local elections and recorded their best performance in terms of votes since 2017.
The Conservatives therefore face the challenge this week of defending a strong baseline while running 20 points behind in the polls (an even weaker position than this time last year). They look set to make significant losses. Other parties, such as the Liberal Democrats, may gain seats purely as a result of the decline in support for the Conservatives, without necessarily attracting more voters themselves.
That said, one key uncertainty is that Reform UK are only fielding candidates in one in six of the wards where local elections will take place. According to the polls, the Conservatives are now losing more of their 2019 voters to Reform than any other party. Perhaps some of these voters will switch to the Conservatives where Reform are not on the ballot paper, thereby helping to stem Conservative losses.
Yet we cannot assess party performance by simply adding up the votes cast (even if we had the resource to collect them all on election night). In England (unlike Scotland and Wales) it is never the case that the whole country votes in local elections at the same time. The places that vote one year are politically different from those that vote in another.
Changes in vote intention opinion polls typically provide an indication of headline net seat changes at local elections. Most of the seats up this year were last fought in 2021. The following table shows how party support in the opinion polls has changed since then.
Table 1. Opinion poll changes from 2021 locals to 2024 locals
%
2021 polls
2024 polls
Change
Con
41
23
-18
Lab
36
44
+8
LD
7
9
+2
Reform
3
12
+9
Green
5
6
+1
Those changes imply a 13-point swing from Conservative to Labour. The graphs below show broadly how that might translate into seat gains for Labour and losses for the Conservatives as percentages of the 2650+ seats up this year. The 13 point swing should put this week’s local election results on par with those for 1995, 1996 and 2013.
Liberal Democrat local seat tallies at the national level have historically been linked primarily on the swing between them and the Conservatives. That swing is 10-points to the Liberal Democrats this time.
Table 2 below shows predictions from the regression models. The figure for Others is just an accounting balance. The Conservative and Labour models are based on Con-Lab swing and the Lib Dem model is based on Con-LD swing. The three are estimated separately. They do not take direct account of the rise in the Reform party share, nor perhaps more importantly given their success last year, the big rise in the number of Green party candidates relative to the number of seats up for election.
Table 2. Model based forecasts for English local election net seat gains/losses for 2024
Forecast
Con
-390
Lab
+320
LD
+100
Others
-30
Based on last year’s experience, I would expect the Conservatives to do worse than the model suggests, and the Liberal Democrats and Others (mainly Greens) to do better.
Elections Etc 