There is no other way to describe it. Reform best us all. The polls in April had put the party on 25 per cent. But after the local elections it is likely that Reform would poll at something closer to 30 per cent. If a general election were held now, the party would overwhelm the House of Commons with 250 parliamentarians. Labour would flounder with 150. The Conservatives would come third with 100.
Take heart, then, that the next general election is not today, nor tomorrow, but in four years’ time.
We produced two forecasts for the local elections. The Britain Predicts model for the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby found that a few hundred votes separated Labour from Reform. In reality, Reform won by just six votes. But the prediction was good enough. Closer than other forecasters, amateur or otherwise.
But my local council forecast anticipated Reform would win only 300 seats, the Conservatives would be cut in half, and Labour would be allowed to sneak some wins through the middle.
As it turns out, the electoral landscape is far more abnormal than almost any pollster had bargained for. Here is what we got wrong.
We were expecting Reform’s wins in urban England. That has been a long time coming. The party won in Runcorn and Helsby by winning in the urban Runcorn (while losing in the parish-y Helsby). But for Reform to break out in Boston, Accrington, the Kent Coast, the Midlands, and swathes of rural Conservative country is something quite remarkable. Save the surprising Wiltshire enclave, Reform swept up the Conservatives with more ease than anticipated.
The test for Labour in these local elections was to prove it still had supporters in the areas it now represents with MPs. Think Wellingborough. Think Amber Valley. Think (I gesture at a map here) all of Lancashire. They failed. In Lancashire, Labour has been reduced to a middle class concern: it averaged 15 per cent in working class Burnley, coming fourth behind (some extremely socially conservative) pro-Gaza Independents.
Have the two main parties been read their last rites? Plenty suggest that this is a “mid-term” parliament contest, after all. And these were low turnout local elections.
Sure, turnout was dire. And the defining question of the day is electoral apathy. Half of the 2024 Labour base aren’t so sure about voting anymore. And it’s not too different for the Conservatives. All of this leaves the only voices being the angry voices – the change-making voices, the Reform voices. Come the next general election, so goes the argument, it will be proven temporary.
Maybe! But Reform did not succeed solely thanks to a crash in turnout. In fact, it was roughly level with 2021 – the election where the Tories turned out a surprising number of its supporters to take Hartlepool and a host of battleground-England from Labour. To write up the locals as a warped presentation of public opinion is more reach than analysis. Higher turnout won’t defeat Reform, at least not now.
A lot of this is coming down to the non-voters now saying they will vote. Pollsters historically downplay these “unreliables” because they are, well, unreliable: they don’t tend to show up, no matter what they say. This is where we went wrong.
Because this time, they did show up in ways we were not expecting. And that should make the next few months – the next few years – more abnormal than anything we have seen this decade.
[See more: Starmer can turn Reform’s rise to his advantage]
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