Reform could comfortably claim victory after this year’s May local elections. The party squeaked through in the Runcorn by-election and swept control of a slew of English councils. Nigel Farage has spent 2025 humbling the two “main” parties of British politics. The Tories are very much in third place, and some polls now put them back with the Lib Dems.
This time last year, the falling support for Labour and the Conservatives could, in part, be explained by their traditional voters (think mortgage-paying, regular voters of average affluence) losing faith and staying home. In aggregate, this would have meant that radical “fringe” candidates were rising against a background of plummeting voter turnout.
But that is no longer the case. The local elections just gone saw turnout stay the same or rise. And now data shows the same phenomenon in council by-elections, which are generally the lowest-profile and worst-attended elections going.
At the Strawberry by-election just gone, in the Ellesmere Port part of West Cheshire council, turnout went up. That’s not normal.
It went up seven points on 2023. Labour shed hundreds of votes. Hundreds more turned out for Reform, which almost won the seat. But Labour’s operation on the day brought it home, and Labour kept control of the council.
Higher turnout now is favouring Reform in a way it has never disproportionately favoured a single party in the past.
Even during the heady days of the SDP/Liberal alliance, Labour and the Tories also won by-elections on higher than average turnouts.
Nigel Farage’s old party, Ukip, tended to succeed as a consequence of low voter turnout. The party very rarely got a successful result when turnout performed above the national average. In 2003, the same could be said for the BNP.
Reform’s performance this year is an enigma. Over half the contests with above average levels of voter turnout have resulted in a Reform win.
This chart is a useful way to ascertain a party’s momentum. Who is enticing more voters to the polls? In 1985, the Alliance were taking the lion’s share of above average engagement contests. In 1990, when poll tax riots gave Labour hefty polling leads, Neil Kinnock benefitted. In 2013, after a pasty tax budget gave Ed Miliband his biggest (though still limited) advantage over David Cameron, the Tory capacity to defend itself in engaged council contests fell to its lowest level since 1998.
And in 2023, the Tories are polling their worst in high turnout council contests since 1995. Starmer’s Labour, meanwhile, only ever enjoyed medium success.
All this makes 2025’s scorecard a very frightening one indeed for the old order. Reform has the momentum. How the two main parties counter that is for them to debate and decide. They might consider looking at the strategy of the second best-performing party for high turnout council seats: the Lib Dems.
[Further reading: Birmingham doesn’t like Robert Jenrick either]
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