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Do Local Elections Matter?

bes-admin
24/04/2025

When the results of the upcoming local elections in early May are announced, many people will try to interpret what these results might mean for the next UK general election. But this isn’t straightforward! Here Professor Jane Green, Professor of Political Science and British Politics, and Director of the Nuffield Politics Research Centre, with research support from Marta Miori, provides four tips to help interpret the May local election results.

Watch Jane speak about this on ITV

 

1.  Location, Location, Location

This year, elections are only being held in 24 of England’s 317 councils. They’re not representative of the country as a whole.

There are areas where the Liberal Democrats may do well, but that’s not the whole country at large, and there are areas where Reform should also do well; but they might have done even better if the elections that were postponed were going ahead. So remember that these results won’t be a great ‘snapshot’ of the whole country.

2.  People Vote Differently In Local Elections

Smaller parties (as a rule) tend to do better in them than they do in a general election, where voters see themselves more as making a choice between potential governments. The Liberal Democrats did better in vote share in every local election of the last fifteen years than they did in the subsequent general election.

If the Liberal Democrats and Reform, and the Greens, do well in these local elections, they’ll want to argue that this shows they have national momentum, but it might not translate in a general election when they’re trying to win MPs. A bad night for the two largest parties may indeed by bad, but not as disastrous an omen for them as it first looks.

3.  A Lot Has Changed Since 2021

One key change now is that Reform are standing candidates in many more local councils than before and their support is up in the polls. They almost have to make gains, but we have to be careful how we interpret that.

The parties will be comparing gains and losses since the last local election vote in these areas in 2021, but we know a lot has changed since then, when the country was still coming out of the Covid Pandemic and the Conservatives were ahead of Labour. The Conservatives performed well in 2021, and are bound to face losses, while Reform is bound to make gains.

What really matters now is how the local elections show us whether the parties are doing better since July last year, when we last saw their real support in votes in the general election. That is how we could more plausibly say they’re support is actually growing. Otherwise, the results will more simply reflect the local election votes catching up with last year’s general election results.

4.  Vote Share > Seats Won

Looking at seats won and lost can be very confusing, and quite deceptive. It’s important to look instead at the change in the share of vote since 2021 and whether the change is consistent with where the polls are now, or where the parties were last July.

We can expect gains in vote share for Reform, losses for the Conservatives, and perhaps some gains for the Greens and Liberal Democrats. But remember that what really matters is the direction of travel and how far the change in share has moved since 2021 and in comparison to last year in 2024. That will tell you whether the parties are doing better now or worse in their first test since last July: who is having a good set of election results or bad.