Local Elections 2026: Reform Gains, Labour Losses — The Full Data

The May 2026 English local elections provided the first major electoral test of a political landscape transformed by Reform UK’s national polling surge. The results confirmed the direction signalled in voting intention surveys: Reform made substantial gains across the Midlands, North, and parts of the South; Labour suffered heavy losses in its traditional heartlands; and the Liberal Democrats continued their steady advance in suburban and rural southern England.

The National Picture: Equivalent Vote Share

The BBC and Sky News “national equivalent vote share” calculation — a projection of what the results would mean in a general election — gave Reform UK 28% of the equivalent national vote, Labour 18%, Conservatives 21%, Greens 13%, and Liberal Democrats 14%. This closely mirrors the national poll-of-polls figures and suggests that unlike previous local elections, voters are using local contests as a direct proxy for their national preference rather than adjusting significantly for local factors.

Reform’s 28% equivalent vote share is the highest the party — in any of its incarnations, including as UKIP — has ever achieved in an English local election. For comparison, UKIP peaked at around 23% in the 2013 local elections. The scale of this performance means the party now has a substantial council presence from which to build candidate pipelines, name recognition in specific wards, and the organisational infrastructure that converts vote share into Westminster seats.

Council-by-Council: Where Reform Made Gains

Reform’s gains were concentrated in a specific geography: post-industrial towns and smaller cities in the East Midlands, Yorkshire, and the North East where Labour once had near-total dominance. In council areas including Doncaster, Rotherham, Mansfield, and several East Midlands districts, Reform won between 35% and 42% of first-preference votes — figures that would translate directly into constituency majorities in a general election.

In the East Midlands, Reform won outright control of four councils previously held by Labour or in no overall control. In Yorkshire, the party took control of two councils and made significant gains in several others. In the South, Reform made unexpected inroads in coastal areas of Kent and Essex, winning seats from both the Conservatives and from previously independent councillors.

The party also performed well in mayoral contests, where direct comparison with the 2024 mayoral elections shows enormous swings. In one East Midlands mayoral authority, Reform finished first with 34% against Labour’s 21% and the Conservatives’ 19% — a mirror image of the national poll-of-polls.

Labour’s Losses: Scale and Geography

Labour’s losses were severe by any historical standard. The party lost control of seven councils it had held continuously since the 1990s, saw its net councillor count fall by approximately 340 seats, and finished third in equivalent vote share for the first time in the party’s history in a major English local election. The losses were heaviest in the Midlands and North, where the party’s traditional working-class vote has been eroding since 2016.

Crucially, Labour did not simply lose to Reform. In many urban areas, particularly London and major university cities, the party lost votes to the Greens and to independent candidates associated with progressive or Gaza-related concerns. The two-directional squeeze — Reform taking voters to the right, Greens taking voters to the left — is the defining pattern of the current Labour collapse.

Labour’s leadership acknowledged the results as “disappointing” but argued they reflected local factors and a mid-term polling pattern that could still be reversed before 2029. This argument was received sceptically by many commentators, given that Labour also suffered heavily in the 2024 local elections — a pattern now stretching across two full local election cycles.

Conservative Performance: Holding in the South, Losing in the North

The Conservatives achieved their best relative result in the south of England, where under Kemi Badenoch the party retained many of its remaining southern rural and suburban councils. In Surrey, Hampshire, and the Kent commuter belt, the party held on by consolidating its remaining support base among older, more affluent homeowners. Badenoch’s strategy of clear right-of-centre positioning appears to be preventing further haemorrhage in these areas.

However, in the North and Midlands, the Conservatives continued to bleed votes to Reform, finishing fourth in several council areas. The party’s net position across the country was a small number of gains in the South offset by continued losses in the North and Midlands, producing an approximately neutral or marginally positive net seat result nationally — which, given the scale of 2024’s council losses, represents a floor rather than a recovery.

Liberal Democrat and Green Performance

The Liberal Democrats continued their strong performance in southern suburban and rural areas, adding councillors in the areas surrounding their 2024 general election gains. In Surrey, Devon, and parts of the Home Counties, the party consolidated a position as the principal opposition to the Conservatives, reinforcing the pattern that gave them 72 MPs in 2024.

The Green Party had its best ever local election in terms of raw seat numbers, with gains concentrated in Bristol, Brighton, Norwich, Oxford, Cambridge, and inner London. The Greens now control several councils outright and have significant representation on dozens more. Their performance confirms the national polling picture showing them at 15% — a historically high figure that is being translated into real electoral gains.

Implications for the 2029 General Election

Local election results are not a direct predictor of general elections, but they provide structural information about the political geography of the country. The 2026 results demonstrate three things of significance for 2029. First, Reform has now demonstrated the capacity to win first-past-the-post contests in specific geographies, not just accumulate dispersed national vote share. Second, Labour’s position in what were once safe seats is structurally weaker than at any point since the 1980s. Third, the Liberal Democrats and Greens are building genuine local power bases that will make vote management more complex for both major parties.

MRP models based on current polling and the local election geography suggest a 2029 election held at current opinion levels would produce a result with no party close to a majority. Reform could win 80–120 seats. Labour would be reduced to approximately 230–260. The Conservatives might hold 150–180. The Lib Dems could exceed 80. No combination of two parties reaches 326 without the other large parties. This is the hung parliament scenario that the 2026 local elections have made the base case rather than the tail risk for 2029.

Frequently Asked Questions