Results wrap
According to Wikipedia, Reform won 30% of the BBC’s Projected National Share (up 28 from the 2024 council elections), Labour 20% (down 14), the Lib Dems 17% (steady), the Tories 15% (down 10) and the Greens 11% (down two). If changes are measured from the last time these wards were contested in 2021, Reform is up 30, the Tories down 21, Labour down nine and the Lib Dems steady. It’s the first council elections where the combined share for the Tories and Labour has been below 50%.
With all 23 councils that held elections declared, Reform won 677 councillors (all new), the Lib Dems 370 (up 163), the Tories 317 (down 676), Labour 99 (down 186) and the Greens 80 (up 45). Councils controlled are 10 Reform (new), three Lib Dems (up three), zero Tories (down 16), zero Labour (down one) and ten with no overall control (up four). Of the six mayoralties contested, Labour won three, Reform two and the Tories one.
Live Commentary
8:48pm Slow progress in the council elections, with just over 150 out of over 1,600 total seats declared so far. Reform has 81 councillors (up 81), the Tories 42 (down 66), Labour 14 (down 13) and the Lib Dems nine (up five).
3:14pm Reform has GAINED Runcorn and Helsby from Labour by just six votes.
2:35pm Labour won the West of England and Doncaster mayoralties. In Doncaster, Labour was down 11 points to 32.6%, just ahead of Reform on 31.6% with 26.0% for the Tories. In W of England, Labour won25%, Reform 22%, the Greens 20%, the Tories 17% and the Lib Dems 14%.
1:55pm Labour won the North Tyneside mayoralty by 30.2-29.4 over Reform with 20.5% for the Tories. But Labour’s vote was down 23 points from 2021, while the Tories were down 11.
1:49pm There’s a recount in Runcorn and Helsby. It appears Reform were leading Labour by four votes going into the recount.
10:59am John Curtice says in nine wards that had the same boundaries as in 2021, the Tory vote is down 23 points and Labour down 10. The by-election declaration is expected about 12pm, which I’ll miss.
10:46am Friday So far Reform has won 15 councillors (up 15), the Tories six (down five) and Labour one (down nine).
Guest post by Adrian Beaumont, who joins us from time to time to provide commentary on elections internationally. Adrian is a paid election analyst for The Conversation. His work for The Conversation can be found here.
A UK parliamentary by-election will occur today for the Labour-held Runcorn and Helsby, with polls closing at 7am AEST Friday. Labour MP Mike Amesbury resigned in March after being sentenced for assault. At the 2024 election, Labour defeated the far-right Reform in this seat by 52.9-18.1 with 16.0% for the Conservatives, 6.4% for the Greens and 5.1% for the Liberal Democrats. Two seat polls conducted in March gave Reform 3-5 point leads over Labour. Elections covered in this article all use first past the post.
UK local government elections will also be held today. These are held every May, but on a four-year cycle, so most seats up at these elections last faced election in 2021. The BBC calculates a Projected National Share (PNS) for each year’s elections, which allows results for a particular election to be compared to the previous year’s election, and also to the election four years ago. Only English councils are included in this year’s elections.
In 2021, the last time these seats were contested, Boris Johnson was popular, and the Conservatives won the PNS by 36-29 over Labour with 17% for the Lib Dems. In the 2024 local elections, held two months before the general election where Labour won a landslide, Labour won the PNS by 34-25 over the Conservatives, with 17% for the Lib Dems and 12% for the Greens. Usually, PNS only gives vote shares for Labour, the Conservatives and Lib Dems, but Reform should be included this year.
The Election Maps UK national poll aggregate gives Reform 25.4% of the vote (up 1.5 since my April 19 article), Labour 23.9% (down 0.5), the Conservatives 21.3% (down 1.2), the Lib Dems 13.7% (up 0.1) and the Greens 8.9% (down 0.1). Reform has overtaken Labour to lead. If these vote shares are reflected at the local elections, Reform will make massive gains at the expense of the Conservatives, with Labour also slumping. Polls conducted in April gave Labour leader and PM Keir Starmer a net approval below -30.
We are unlikely to see results from the parliamentary by-election until several hours after polls close. I will be out for two hours from 11am Friday. Given the proximity to the Australian election, I don’t intend to follow these elections as closely as I normally would.
Canadian election wrap
At Monday’s Canadian federal election, the centre-left Liberals won 169 of the 343 seats (up nine from 160 of 338 in 2021), the Conservatives won 144 seats (up 25), the separatist left-wing Quebec Bloc (BQ) 22 (down ten), the left-wing New Democratic Party (NDP) seven (down 18) and the Greens one (down one). The Liberals were three seats short of the 172 needed for a majority.
Vote shares were 43.7% Liberals (up 11.1%), 41.3% Conservatives (up 7.6), 6.3% BQ (down 1.3%) (27.9% in Quebec), 6.3% NDP (down 11.5%), 1.3% Greens (down 1.0%) and 0.7% for the far-right People’s (down 4.2%). Turnout was 68.7% (up 6.4%).
This election was far more proportional than in 2021. FPTP can be roughly proportional, but only if the two biggest parties get a high combined vote share, and there’s a small gap between these two parties. This election had the highest two-party share since 1958. It resembles the UK 2017 election, when the big two parties also surged.
The CBC Poll Tracker’s final aggregate of national polls gave the Liberals a 42.8-39.2 lead over the Conservatives, so the 3.6-point margin slightly overstated the Liberals’ 2.4-point election margin. Two of the three polls that had one-day surveys conducted the day before the election were very accurate, with Liaison giving the Liberals a two-point lead and Nanos a 2.7-point lead.
Seat estimates overstated the Liberals with the Tracker’s point estimate giving the Liberals a 189-125 seat lead. I said previously that I expected the Liberals’ vote efficiency to drop because of the crash in NDP support.
I believe the Liberals slid from a peak lead of 7.1 points in the Tracker on April 8 due to Mark Carney’s fading honeymoon from replacing Justin Trudeau as PM on March 14. Labor in Australia is not affected by a fading honeymoon.
Northumberland Council (N-E England, bordering Scotland)
Con 26/69 seats (-10)
Reform 23
Lab 8 (-12)
Ind 7 (-1)
LD 3 (-)
Green 2 (-)
A relatively strong result for Conservative, probably now one of their strongest areas of the country. There’s a bit of the ‘Ben Houchen’ effect in the N-E, also Boris won a lot of votes in N-E that used to be rusted on Labour heartland. Northumberland has a lot of rural of course, so is not exactly the same as all the rest of the N-E.
Labour did notably worse than Tories, and Reform didn’t quite surpass Tories but once again substantial gains.
PS Reform are ‘new’ and had virtually no council seats anywhere so no need to put changes in brackets for them.
Kirsdarke
At this stage of his premiership, Blair was +30 on approval and making gains not -30 and heavy losses.
He went on to win 2 more majority governments, and might have won a 4th had his own party not wanted him gone (that’s a big ‘might’ but even Gordon Brown pulled it back reasonably well so Cons only got a minority in 2010, so surely Blair would have done better?)
While Blair was electorally popular at the time, most of UK Labour seem to despise him these days from what I’ve heard. They even use “Blairite” as a slur.
Gordon Brown seems to be more respected in his legacy meanwhile.
No idea why the councils that were counting overnight have still not finished counting/declaring (we don’t do live counts in the UK, it’s only known once all votes in a seat have been counted).
I have to do some work, so I’ll just give partial Lincolnshire results with exactly 35/70 results known.
Con 1 (-25)
Ref 29
Lab 3 (-1)
LD 2 (+2)
Green 0 (-)
Ind 0 (-5)
Lincolnshire is, predictably, going straight from Con stronghold to Reform stronghold. Interesting that the Indys held on in Northumberland but not in Lincolnshire (Reform, and previous incarnations, often had a lot of crossover votes with Indys, who over here are quite often ‘Residents Associations’.
“While Blair was electorally popular at the time, most of UK Labour seem to despise him these days from what I’ve heard. They even use “Blairite” as a slur.
Gordon Brown seems to be more respected in his legacy meanwhile.”
Depends where you read. It would be true that a lot of people would be more quiet about their support of Blair because of the visceral despisal in some quarters, and they are sometimes conservative-type voters, and notably those who are more hawkish on foreign policy from across the spectrum.
A lot of Blair’s haters are from the far left (which comprises a considerably large part of the Labour party as well as the much smaller Greens) and parts of the far right, although it’s not altogether ideological so it’s across the spectrum.
But do a survey on ‘best PMs’ the UK has had in people’s lifetimes, and Blair will come ahead of Brown – whilst Brown has sort of evolved into respectable figure, he’s widely regarded as a very incapable PM. He carries weight in Scotland still, but is pretty much irrelevant elsewhere outside of a few academic circles.
Whereas Blair is still doing the thinking and offering new and radical ideas, he has very sharp political instincts still and, I would think, a desire for further public service or at least influence of the debate. I don’t agree with him all the time, but he can talk a lot of sense when other people from his party (and elsewhere) are defending the indefensible just to virtue signal etc. , he’s often ahead of the curve in that sense.
I also happen to be one of those who thinks he got lambasted over the coals about Iraq quite unfairly, and that it was the right thing to do at the time. The reconstruction not being thought through by the allies and causing all sorts of problems for years, doesn’t change that for me.
I also resent the debt his government saddled the UK with for decades after his own premiership through the ill-thought through PFI contracts on which those new hospitals and schools etc. were built. Criminal waste of money, would have been far, far better economically to have put the government itself into direct debt not pay annual £billions to private contractors forever after. Talk about a short-term gain for (very) long-term pain, the state is still stuck in some of these contracts wasting countless billions now.
@BTSays at 5:05pm
Interesting thoughts. I’ll keep that in mind, since the most I know about UK politics from that time is skits from Dead Ringers.
Full Greater Lincolnshire Mayoral results:
Reform – Dame Andrea Jenkyns 104,133 / 42.0%
Conservative – Rob Waltham 64,585 / 26.1%
Labour – Jason Stockwood 30,384 / 12.3%
Linc. Independents – Marianne Overton 19,911 / 8.0%
Green – Sally Horscroft 15,040 / 6.1%
Lib Dem – Trevor Young 13,728 / 5.5%
Turnout 29.9%
No past results as it’s a new position.
Kirsdarke 5.11pm
Didn’t realise how close NORTH TYNESIDE mayoralty was:
Lab – Karen Clark 16,230 / 30.2% (-23.2)
Ref – John Falkenstein 15,786 29.4% (+29.4)
Con – Liam Adam Bones 11,018 20.5% (-10.7)
Green 7.4% (+0.5)
Lib Dem 6.4% (+0.7)
Ind x 2 = 6%
Turnout 33.6%
Again a relatively good Con result with the N-E effect, given that nobody put them in contention to win people might just not have bothered. Remembering that 2021 was a really good year for Cons under Boris so see changes in that context.
(from BBC)
“The Ex-Greggs worker with knack for bouncing back
Joshua Nevett
Political reporter
Dame Andrea Jenkyns has been elected as the mayor of Greater Lincolnshire, giving the party she represents, Reform UK, its most powerful office to date.
In her victory speech, she declared it was a “new dawn in British politics” and vowed Reform would “reset Britain to its glorious past”.
She beat the Conservative candidate by more than 40,000 votes, which will feel like like a personal vindication for the former Tory MP.
A former Greggs worker and Miss UK finalist, Jenkyns will now control an annual budget of £24m and hold powers over skills, transport and economic development in the region.
The result marks a remarkable political comeback for a former Conservative MP voted out less than a year ago in the general election.
But as Jenkyns’s meandering political career shows, she has form for bouncing back from crushing disappointments with attention-grabbing election wins.”
PS Greggs is a bakery chain in the UK. Never knew about the ‘Miss UK’ bit before.
Runcorn and Helsby parliamentary by-election – full results (changes with July 2024 GE):
Reform – Sarah Pochin 38.7% (+20.6)
Labour – Karen Shore 38.7% (-14.2)
Con – Sean Houlston 7.2% (-8.8)
Green – Chris Copeman 7.1% (+0.7)
Lib Dem – Paul Duffy 2.9% (-2.2)
Others – 2.5% (+1.4)
Turnout 46.2% (-12.5)
(this is a high turnout for a by-election, esp against such a low GE turnout)
BTSays says:
Friday, May 2, 2025 at 3:33 pm
Some probably only starting counting today, I don’t know
*********
Majority aren’t counting until today.
With local government there isn’t a requirement to count overnight as new terms of office don’t start until next week – unlike Parliament where a new government takes over immediately and even the new MP isn’t officially one until she takes the oath and signs the declaration and earliest that can happen is next Tuesday.
Same with the mayoralties.
I imagine if it hadn’t been a bank holiday here on Monday those counting overnight would have started this morning as people might have wanted a long weekend.
Day time counts mean fresher and more available staff to count the votes. Candidates will have had a rest too.
ChrisC @ #63 Friday, May 2nd, 2025 – 5:57 pm
Ohh, okay, that makes sense.
And a reminder that at 9.00 AM UK time there are still 1,500 seats to be declared
Only around 150 councillors were elected over night so any prognostication on what the results mean is in very early days and IMHO likely to be wrong.
Early results are probably stronger for Reform than, say, Gloucestershire or Hertfordshire where Cons’ main rivals making gains may be the Lib Dems.
But I don’t think the narrative of Reform winning seats all over the place will significantly change.
Really the results are more-or-less an endorsement of current polling and not much more, in a sense.
But it does get people’s attention who don’t follow opinion polling, and has knock-on effects therefore.
Yes the narrative of Reform winning seats will still apply but it’s how many they win is and who they win them from is what matters
They’ll certainly take more off the Tories and that’s the main narrative. Labour losing seats has basically already been factored in as the council seats up for election aren’t Labour heartlands.
The loss of Runcorn is obviously a loss but it was by 6 votes not the thousands some had been predicting,
EDIT: Ignore the below – just noticed that’s the tally after 2/6 councils declared!!
I’ll leave it up for interest.
Oh my goodness, Reform have won Cambridgeshire and Peterborough not Con (favourites) or Lab (incumbent, only got 10.9%!)
Reform UK,
Ryan Coogan
total votes
15,170
share
32.7%
Conservative,
Paul Bristow
total votes
14,035
share
30.3%
Liberal Democrat,
Lorna Dupré
total votes
9,523
share
20.5%
Labour,
Anna Smith
total votes
5,039
share
10.9% (-21.9)
Green,
Bob Ensch
total votes
2,591
share
5.6%
BTSays,
Thanks for the explanations and insights. Greatly appreciated.
Oh, and, err, sorry about the ‘stupid Poms’ bit earlier. I probably could have worded that a bit better.
And yes, I know a double-barrelled name usually means the same name twice, like Woy Woy or Mullum Mullum, but I was using artistic licence because I couldn’t think of another way to put it, and I assumed everyone would know what I meant.
Ante Meridian
No worries 🙂 .
Actually, double-barrelled means two names joined by a hyphen. Eg. Mr Carter-Smith or Mr Ante-Meridian. . .
Cambs & Peterborough Mayor (final result)
Con – Paul Bristow 28.4%
Ref – Ryan Coogan 23.4%
Lab – Anna Smith 20.1%
LD – Lorna Dupre 19.6%
Green – Bob Ensch 8.6%
Turnout 32.9% (-4.1)
Con gain from Lab – but it was a ranked choice vote last time, and Con did win on the 1st round that time too, 40.5% to 32.8% for Lab and 26.7% for LD – but you can’t equate the 1st choice votes to what it would have been if it had been a FPTP election, of course.
Council elections – seat count so far:
Reform 358 (+358)
Conservative 130 (-298)
Labour 31 (-102)
Lib Dem 130 (+47)
Green 30 (+16)
Independent 46 (-20)
Majority control of councils (most still unknown):
Reform 3 (+3)
Conservative 0 (-3)
NOC (no overall control) 2 (-)
Durham County Council – 98 seats
Reform 65 (+65)
Lib Dem 14 (+1)
Indy 12 (-14)
Lab 4 (-38)
Green 2 (+1)
Con 1 (-15)
Reform win from NOC (was run by a coalition of Ind/LD/Con)
Staffordshire County Council – 62 seats
Reform 49 (+49)
Cons 10 (-46)
Lab 1 (-4)
Green 1 (+1)
Ind 1 (-)
Reform gain from Con
Devon County Council – 60 seats
Lib Dem 27 (+18)
Reform 18 (+18)
Cons 7 (-32)
Green 6 (+4)
Ind 2 (-1)
Lab 0 (-7)
Con lose to NOC
Worcestershire County Council – 57 seats
Ref 27 (+27)
Con 12 (-33)
Green 8 (-5)
LD 6 (+2)
Ind 2 (-)
Lab 2 (-1)
Con lose to NOC
Right. Unless I’m missing something, whomever* said about ten or twelve hours ago that it was too early to talk about any party being ‘smashed’ might be thinking we can now actually say it. Labour and the Tories are getting smashed.
This isn’t good.
* That’s not a word I get to use every day.
Leicestershire County Council – 55 seats
Ref 25 (+25)
Con 15 (-27)
LD 11 (+2)
Lab 2 (-2)
Green 1 (+1)
Ind 1 (+1)
Con lose to NOC
At 13.00h (2.5 hours ago) the shares of vote after 306 of 1399 wards declared, was:
Reform 35%
Cons 24.6%
Lab 14.9%
LD 12.8%
Green 6.3%
Ind/Others 6.4%
These will change quite a bit by the end of the day. NB They are not the same as ‘national equivalent vote share’ – large swathes of the country had no vote today, and these are purely taken from actual votes cast.
Derbyshire County Council – 64 seats
Ref 42 (+42)
Con 12 (-33)
Lab 3 (-11)
LD 3 (-1)
Green 2 (+1)
Ind 2 (+2)
Reform GAIN from Con
Nottinghamshire County Council – 64 seats
Ref 40 (+40)
Con 17 (-19)
Lab 4 (-10)
Ind 2 (-1)
Ashfield Independents 1 (-9)
LD 0 (-1)
Green 0 (-)
Reform GAIN from Con
Lincolnshire County Council – 70 seats
Ref 44 (+44)
Con 14 (-40)
LD 5 (+2)
Ind 4 (-5)
Lab 3 (-1)
Reform GAIN from Con
Lancashire County Council – 84 seats
Ref 53 (+53)
Ind 9 (+9)
Con 8 (-39)
Lab 5 (-27)
LD 5 (+3)
Green 4 (+2)
Reform GAIN from Con
Taking a break, but will leave you meanwhile with this thought from John Curtice:
Professor Sir John Curtice
Polling expert
“On average, so far, a ward has been won in these local elections with a 15% majority for the first-placed party.
The equivalent figure in 2021 was 25%.
This is one indication of how the fragmentation of party support has resulted in more outcomes that are tight.
Equally, in the average constituency, nearly three parties have secured more than 15% of the vote. The comparable figure there in 2021 was closer to two parties.”
Gloucestershire County Council – 55 seats
LD 27 (+11)
Ref 11 (+11)
Green 9 (+5)
Con 6 (-24)
Ind 1 (+1)
Lab 1 (-4)
Con LOSE to NOC
Warwickshire County Council – 57 seats
Ref 23 (+23)
LD 14 (+9)
Con 9 (-33)
Green 7 (+4)
Lab 3 (-3)
Residents’ Association 1 (-)
Con LOSE to NOC
Oswald Mosley will be turning in his grave. If only he was born 100 years later he might have become the Prime Minister.
Oswald Mosley was a nazi as I recall – nothing to do with the UK elections yesterday or the parties who won seats, none of whom are remotely such.
Meanwhile, some sensible and insightful input from:
Professor Sir John Curtice
Polling expert
“On the basis of the results in over 1,100 of the wards which have declared their results in these elections, the BBC is estimating that – if a general election had been held on Thursday and the places that did not have elections mirrored the behaviour of those that did, and if the principal parties contested all the seats – the results would’ve been as follows:
Reform UK: 30%
Labour: 20%
Liberal Democrats: 17%
Conservatives: 15%
Greens: 11%
Others: 7%
This is the first time that a party other than Conservatives or Labour have been ahead in the projected national vote share calculation – and Reform’s estimated 30% is well above the 23% that Ukip scored at the height of its popularity in 2013.
Labour’s tally equals its lowest previous recorded performance in 2009, while the Conservative estimate is the party’s lowest-ever recorded.
This is the first time that the combined share of the vote for Conservative and Labour has been below 50%, underlining, as I reported earlier, the fragmentation of British politics in these elections.”
Wiltshire County Council – 98 seats
LD 43 (+16)
Con 37 (-24)
Ref 10 (+10)
Ind 7 (-)
Lab 1 (-2)
Con LOSE to NOC
It is notable that Conservatives held up better in Wiltshire than virtually anywhere else, but even here their local reputation couldn’t save their majority or even their status as largest party.
They were bullish about Wiltshire due to their proud record of budgetary prudence without having had to either make the level of cuts that many councils have made, or fallen into the deep financial trouble that so many councils have had the last few years.
I suppose they at least prevented the Lib Dems from winning a majority.
Ozzy would have been well at home in the party of people who tried burning down hotels and murdering refugees recently.
Hertfordshire County Council – 78 seats
LD 31 (+8)
Con 22 (-24)
Ref 14 (+14)
Green 5 (+4)
Lab 5 (-2)
Ind 1 (-)
Con LOSE to NOC
Kent County Council – 81 seats
Ref 57 (+57)
LD 12 (+6)
Con 5 (-57)
Green 5 (+1)
Lab 2 (-5)
Ind 0 (-1)
Residents Ass 0 (-1)
Reform GAIN from Con
“Ozzy would have been well at home in the party of people who tried burning down hotels and murdering refugees recently.”
Possibly, but I’m not aware they’ve formed any political party or stood for election anywhere. Probably hard when there’s about 4 of you tbf, and you’re on trial or behind bars.
Cambridgeshire County Council – 61 seats
LD 31 (+11)
Con 10 (-18)
Ref 10 (+10)
Lab 5 (-4)
Green 3 (+3)
Ind 2 (-2)
Lib Dem GAIN from Con (1st majority for LD so far)
Oxfordshire County Council – 69 seats
LD 36 (+12)
Lab 12 (-3)
Con 10 (-15)
Green 7 (+4)
Ind 2 (+1)
Ref 1 (+1)
Res Ass 1 (-)
Lib Dem GAIN from NOC
NB Only 1 seat for Reform in Oxfordshire
“Ex-Olympic gold medallist boxer Luke Campbell has emerged victorious in Hull & East Yorkshire’s mayoral contest, handing Reform UK yet another seismic win after Dame Andrea Jenkyns topped Lincolnshire’s poll on the other side of the Humber.
Campbell, 37, who joins a star-studded list of Reform UK candidates, won Nigel Farage’s second mayoral win. . .
. . .The local lad received 48,491 votes in East Yorkshire, putting him 10,981 ballots ahead of Liberal Democrat Mike Ross in second.”
Hull and East Yorkshire mayoral election:
Reform – Luke Campbell 35.8%
LD – Mike Ross 27.7%
Con – Anne Handley 15.8%
Lab – Margaret Pinder 13.7%
Green – Kerry Harrison 3.7%
The Yorkshire Party – Rowan Halstead 3.2%
Turnout: 29.8%
So Reform have a 2nd mayoral win. I’m surprised to see Lib Dems so strong, though I think that may reflect recent inroads they’ve made on Hull council.
Cornwall County Council – 87 seats
Ref 28 (+28)
LD 26 (+13)
Ind 16 (-)
Con 7 (-40)
Lab 4 (-1)
Green 3 (+2)
Mebyon Kernow* 3 (-2) *MK are basically Cornish nationalists, when translated from Cornish to English Mebyon Kernow literally means ‘Sons of Cornwall’.
Con LOSE to NOC
Shropshire County Council – 74 seats
LD 42 (+29)
Ref 16 (+16)
Con 7 (-38)
Green 4 (-)
Lab 4 (-5)
Ind 1 (-2)
Lib Dem GAIN from Con
That’s me for today on here.
Re those still not all declared:
* Reform have WON Doncaster Council from Labour – they have 29/37 declared so far, there are 55 total seats.
* Stop press: – Conservative will be the largest party on a council! – Buckinghamshire County Council, where they have 39/83 declared so far, total 97 seats. (they are down 25 on last time, LDs are on 24/83 and Reform 1/83)
* Reform may win North Northamptonshire CC from Cons where they have 20/32 seats declared so far (total 66).
* Reform may win West Northamptonshire CC from Cons where they have 12/28 seats declared so far (total 76). Cons close behind on 10/28 (-9).
A lot more Reform councillors means more chance of scandal and outrage. The track record of Reform elected officials to either be caught out doing something questionable or falling out with the party is pretty bad.