2026 local and devolved elections: What to measure and expect for Labour

In the run-up to every set of May elections when there isn’t a simultaneous general election, I write a preview of the local elections, including historical data so we can benchmark Labour’s performance. I’ve been doing this since 2011.

 I have put off writing this preview far later than I would usually, as frankly, given the current opinion polls, it is rather a depressing task. However, Labourlist’s Editor is persuasive and for the sake of completeness I need to record bad years as well as good ones.

 Labour is unlucky in that it is facing quite a large set of elections this year, at what – one must hope – is the nadir of our mid-term fortunes. Many of the council seats we are defending were last fought in May 2022, a year when we did pretty well, increasing our vote share by 6% to 35%. A further piece of bad luck is that 13 of those Metropolitan Boroughs which would normally only elect a third of councillors at a time have new ward boundaries, necessitating the election of the whole council and increasing Labour’s potential losses in those authorities three-fold.

 The 5,066 council seats up for election are as follows:

• Every councillor in all 32 London Boroughs (1,817 seats).
• Every councillor in 16 Metropolitan Boroughs (1,064 seats).
• One third of the councillors in 16 Metropolitan Boroughs (355 seats).
• Every councillor in 6 Unitary Councils (367 seats).
• One third of the councillors in 12 Unitary Councils (201 seats).
• Every councillor in 6 County Councils, where the elections were delayed last year (430 seats).
• Every councillor in 3 District Councils (141 seats).
• Half the councillors in 7 District Councils (123 seats).
• One third of the councillors in 38 District Councils (516 seats)

 In addition, the elected Mayors of Croydon, Hackney, Lewisham, Newham, Tower Hamlets, and Watford are up for election. Labour currently holds the Mayoralties in Hackney, Lewisham and Newham. All are under threat from challenges to Labour’s left, whilst there is some possibility of Labour gaining Croydon from the Tories.

A year ago, anyone looking at that list would have thought it favoured Labour as it included London and other major cities with a minimal threat from Reform. Now, however, Labour faces losses to Reform in the more “Red Wall” components of this year’s set of elections, and a surging Green Party in London and other major cities and university towns.

READ MORE: Labour members overwhelmingly pessimistic about May elections – poll

There are a number of predictions of the overall number of seat losses, out of the 2,557 seats it is defending, that Labour may incur, from pollsters and academic psephologists, ranging from 1,200 to 2,000. My personal view is that the losses to Reform are fairly predictable, and will mirror the dramatic extent of those in County Councils last year (for instance in County Durham we went down to just 4 Labour seats), but the exact scale of the losses to the Greens, and whether this involves the Greens actually taking control of any London boroughs, is the big unpredictable variable.

There are at least four ways of measuring Labour’s national performance: national projected vote share (which the BBC calculates for the whole country, including areas not voting this year), raw number of councillors, number of councillors gained or lost and number of councils controlled.

Looking first at projected national vote share (PNS), the estimated figures the BBC uses are as follows:

2010: 29% (general election result)
2011: 37%
2012: 38%
2013: 29%
2014: 31%
2015: 30% (general election result)
2016: 31%
2017: 27%
2018: 35%
2019: 28%
2020: No election due to Covid
2021: 29%
2022: 35%
2023: 35%
2024: 34%
2025: 20%

 National vote share in local elections for Labour has always been lower than the Westminster opinion polls, because the Greens, Lib Dems and Independents perform better in local than in general elections, when they get squeezed. If this pattern holds, we can expect a PNS below 20%. 2025’s 20% was the lowest figure since 2009, matching that as a record low.

Raw number of councillors is the national (Great Britain) total figure, including all the thousands of councillors not up for election (by-elections and changes of party make it difficult to track the exact figure):

 2010: 4,831
2011: 5,691
2012: 6,559
2013: 6,850
2014: 7,098
2015: 6,895
2016: 6,859
2017: 6,297
2018: 6,468
2019: 6,323
2021: 5,656
2022: 5,904
2023: 6,415
2024: 6,600
2025: 6,395 

Losses at the upper end of the predictions of 2,000 would take us back to numbers last seen during the Brown premiership.

 Number of gains or losses. Labour has never made net gains while it is in power nationally, other than a couple of times when the local elections have been held on the same day as a General Election, driving up turnout. Losing councillors is standard for every year when Labour has been in government (the same thing almost always also happens to the Tories when they are in government). Local elections provide an opportunity to protest against the incumbent national government, but the scale and location of the losses will be significant.

Become a friend of LabourList and join our community. Our friends support our vital non-factional work and get access to exclusive content and events. 

 These are the number of seats lost in years where Labour has incurred net council seat losses since 1997:

 1998 – 88
1999 – 1,150
2000 – 574
2002 – 334
2003 – 833
2004 – 464
2005 – 114
2006 – 319
2007 – 665
2008 – 331
2009 – 291
2015 – 203
2016 – 18
2017 – 386
2019 – 84
2021 – 327
2025 – 187 

It looks likely that the record set in 1999 will be broken.

Control of councils. The number of councils that Labour has controlled has been as follows:

 2002 – 136
2003 – 103
2004 – 94
2005 – 92
2006 – 75
2007 – 58
2008 – 46
2009 – 37
2010 – 54
2011 – 81
2012 – 114
2013 – 117
2014 – 120
2015 – 114
2016 – 114
2017 – 107
2018 – 105
2019 – 99
2021 – 91
2022 – 96
2023 – 116
2024 – 121
2025 – 120

As well as the council elections, there are the hugely important elections for the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Senedd. These were last contested in 2021, before Labour really started its pre-2024 recovery in the opinion polls.

Labour’s number of seats has been in continuous, steady decline in the Scottish Parliament:

 1999 – 56
2003 – 50
2007 – 46
2011 – 37
2016 – 24
2021 – 22 

Whilst a reversal of that pattern now looks unlikely, Labour could move back into second place, having come third behind the SNP and Tories in 2016 and 2021.

 In Wales, there is very little point making seat comparisons with previous elections due to an odd decision to move from a mixed system (constituencies plus regional top-up lists to ensure a more proportional outcome) to a form of proportional representation that involves no single-member First-Past-the-Post element but instead the country being divided into 16 constituencies, each of which elect 6 MSs in a list system, with the Senedd growing from 60 to 96 members.

Comparison of vote share is possible though, the previous constituency vote share results for Labour being: 

1999 – 38%
2003 – 40%
2007 – 32%
2011 – 42%
2016  – 35%
2021 – 40%

With opinion polls and the Caerphilly by-election showing Labour in third place, behind Plaid Cymru and Reform, this could be the most upsetting statistic on a night of miserable statistics. 

Subscribe here to our daily newsletter roundup of Labour news, analysis and comment– and follow us on TikTok, Bluesky, WhatsApp, X and Facebook. You can also write to our editor to share your thoughts on our stories and share your own. The best letters are published every Sunday.

• • SHARE: If you have anything to share that we should be looking into or publishing about this story – or any other topic involving Labour– contact us (strictly anonymously if you wish) at [email protected].
  • SUBSCRIBE: Sign up to LabourList’s morning email here for the best briefing on everything Labour, every weekday morning.
  • BECOME A FRIEND: If you enjoyed this, why not consider becoming a Friend of LabourList? Help sustain our journalism, and of course Friends do get benefits…
  • PARTNER: If you or your organisation might be interested in partnering with us on sponsored events or projects, email [email protected].
  • ADVERTISE: If your organisation would like to advertise or run sponsored pieces on LabourList‘s daily newsletter or website, contact our exclusive ad partners Total Politics at [email protected].