Local elections 2025 – Predictions

As a respondent to a recent Lord Ashcroft Polling focus group said when asked about the Tories and Labour: “Like choosing between gonorrhoea and chlamydia.” And in that one comment we neatly summarise the current conundrum for voters this morning on local election day.

Our mythical average voter has not yet forgiven the Tories for Brexit, Boris and partygate but is fatally underwhelmed by the utter incompetence of the Labour government that has replaced them. The elections today will be all about the protest vote, principally Reform, the Lib Dems and the Greens depending on where you are geographically in England.

The big one of course is the Runcorn Parliamentary by-election. As this is counted overnight, it will dominate the news tomorrow. The local elections are now almost all counted on Friday; council staff overtime and all that!

Whenever we consider local elections there are some factors we must always take into account:

1. By-elections and local elections are by and large protest votes. The government does badly, smaller parties do well. The end. If those two switch around, then it actually means something.

   
   

2. These elections are small in number – it’s a county council election year (there’s not many of those anyway!) which are geographically unrepresentative for the most part. They are even smaller in number this year due to the current local government devolution agenda, meaning there are unusually no elections in East Sussex, Essex, Hampshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, Surrey and West Sussex.

   
   

3. All these seats were last contested in May 2021, the peak of the post Covid Boris bounce when Labour lost a safe seat Parliamentary by-election and the then newly elected Labour Opposition leader, Keir Starmer, considered resigning because they did so badly.

   
   

4. In round numbers there are approximately 1000 Tory councillors up for election whereas there are only around 300 Labour ones. 19 of the 23 councils up for election are held by the Tories. Thus, there's lots for the Tories to lose and Labour is rather irrelevant.

   
   

So what's going to happen?

Labour – It's going to be bad for Labour, but they're hoping no one will notice. However, if they hang onto their Runcorn Parliamentary by-election seat, it will feel like an historic victory and they will be shouting from the rooftops.

Tories – It will be a shocker. Predictions suggest 500 plus losses. The Tories say around 750, so they probably think rather less than that in reality meaning they can claim they did better than expected. The REC team suspects it may well be on the upper end for the Tories. It is quite possible if the Tories do really badly the endless leadership psychodrama the Tories backbenchers seem addicted to could start up all over again. Robert Jenrick will be being watched like a hawk by the media.

Lib Dems – They will probably do quite well in the South picking up a good number of new councillors. There will be a predictable cringey Ed Davey stunt for the cameras. Yawn!

Greens – They should do quite well but overall their numbers are small. They will of course claim it as some sort of historic moment.

Reform – Truthfully this is Reform’s big moment. The Tories have already been shedding votes to Reform for some time, and now Labour will join that pity party. They have a serious shot at winning their first Parliamentary by-election. They have the potential to win a number of councils; look out for the County Durham and Doncaster results. And they should be odds on to win several hundred new councillor seats. They would claim this shows serious momentum with them currently riding high in first place in national opinion polls. If all of this does come about, it is quite possible that we are at the tipping point. Perhaps the moment when the right of centre vote begins to drain away from the Tories to Reform. Both parties are fighting each other in a doom spiral to certain death. Only one of them will win in the end.

However, if Reform falters and does not do as well as expected, then this could be the moment that the Reform bubble starts leaking, which would be a great relief to Badenoch and the Tories, and for that matter Labour too.

We will of course send you a full analysis at the beginning of next week.

Now get out and vote!