Sir John Curtice: Election results show politics in the UK has fragmented

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Thursday’s election results have confirmed that electoral politics in Britain has become highly fragmented.

Reform UK was certainly the winner of the English local elections. The party has won most seats and votes. It will end up with well over 1,000 net gains.

Meanwhile in a sample of more than 500 council wards where the BBC collected detailed voting figures, the party recorded an average vote share of 25% – not an especially high figure but still enough to put Reform well ahead of its rivals.

Nigel Farage’s party has done best in places that voted heavily for Brexit in 2016. In wards where more than 60% voted for Leave, support for Reform has averaged 40%.

In contrast, in places where less than 40% backed Brexit, Reform won on average just 10%.

The Greens’ success was more modest, but still represented their best election result ever. They have averaged 17% of the vote.

This represents an eight-point increase on the party’s support when this round of local elections was last held in 2022 – and seven points higher than its performance in the local elections held shortly before the 2024 general election, their best local election performance ever.

This has yielded the party more than 200 gains and the mayoralty of two London boroughs and control of three councils. The party often secured a number of creditable second and (especially) third places but relatively few firsts.

In contrast, both Labour and the Conservatives have suffered a sharp loss of support.

On average, Labour’s vote is down by 18 points on that in 2022 and 2024. The drop has been especially sharp in places where the party was previously strongest and in wards where many people identify as Muslim.

This pattern has helped to magnify the party’s seat losses, which constitute more than half of all the seats the party was defending. So far, the party has lost control of 23 councils.

But there was even worse news for Labour in Wales where it had not lost an election in a century. It crashed to third place with just 11% of the vote, down 25 points on the last election in 2021.

Plaid is now the largest party in Wales with 43 of the 96 seats, ensuring that all three devolved governments are now likely to have nationalist first ministers. This was in truth nothing but an earthquake.

Meanwhile, support for the Conservatives is down on average by 11 points since 2022 and 10 points since 2024, by which point the party had already lost much of its former popularity.

Support fell especially heavily where Reform support was highest, underlining the threat it is posing to Kemi Badenoch’s party. The Conservatives have also lost more than half of the seats the party was defending and, as with Labour, this was magnified by the fall in its support being greatest in places where it was previously strongest.

The party has had one bright spot – regaining control of Westminster, once a highly prized jewel in the party’s London crown that was taken from its grasp by Labour in 2022.

However, this success was a reflection of a sharp 17-point drop in Labour support rather than an indication of any progress made by the party itself – its own tally too, fell by five points, in what is now one of the few places that is still primarily a Conservative vs Labour battleground.

The Liberal Democrats anticipated making significant gains. However, these largely have not really transpired. The party gained control of Portsmouth and Stockport but lost control of Hull.

On average support for the party is down by five points on 2022 and three on 2024. It has gained seats primarily because in places where it started off in second place it has been able to profit from the sharp falls in Conservative or Labour support.

Although the party is on course to make gains in Scotland, it once again has just one seat in Wales. There is little sign of the Lib Dems being able to make the kind of electoral progress that has been registered by Reform or even the Greens.

Analysis by Patrick English, Steve Fisher, Robert Ford, Lotte Hargrave, Johnathon Mellon and Stuart Perrett.