{"id":31901,"date":"2026-05-08T21:17:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T21:17:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/31901\/"},"modified":"2026-05-08T21:17:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T21:17:15","slug":"election-expert-explains-why-farage-should-be-privately-worried-by-reform-local-election-results","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/31901\/","title":{"rendered":"Election expert explains why Farage should be ‘privately worried’ by Reform local election results"},"content":{"rendered":"

As local election<\/a> results continue to come in, there\u2019s no doubt that Reform will end the day having made huge gains. However, an election expert has explained how, when you drill down into the data, there might be concern for Nigel Farage\u2026<\/p>\n

Reform make big gains<\/p>\n

With the first raft of councils having announced their results by the end of Friday morning, it\u2019s clear Reform are the big winners. <\/p>\n

At the time of writing, they\u2019ve won 406 seats and gained control of two councils, in Havering and Newcastle-under-Lyme. <\/p>\n

Speaking in Havering, where Reform won control of their first ever London borough council, party leader Nigel Farage said the results coming through across England on Friday morning show a \u201ctruly historic shift\u201d in British politics.<\/p>\n

READ NEXT: Nigel Farage shuts down question about \u00a35m sum from crypto billionaire<\/a><\/p>\n

With 90 councils still left to declare their results, Reform will almost certainly end the day as the party who have made the most gains. <\/p>\n

However, this doesn\u2019t quite tell the full story\u2026<\/p>\n

Reasons for Reform concerns<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s not forget that since the turn of the year, Reform\u2019s polling has stalled and fallen. There is plenty of evidence to suggest we\u2019re actually past the party\u2019s popularity peak<\/a> \u2013 and the local elections back this up as well.<\/p>\n

This was explained by former YouGov president Peter Kellner. In an analysis of the results so far on his Substack blog<\/a>, the elections expert highlighted some of the underlying numbers of Reform\u2019s performance.<\/p>\n

He wrote: \u201cBehind the impressive tally of Reform\u2019s gains \u2013 likely to end up well over 1,000 \u2013 Nigel Farage should be privately worried. <\/p>\n

\u201cIn last year\u2019s local elections Reform won 41 per cent of all seats contested across England. On the basis of the overnight figures, this year\u2019s tally is around 33 per cent. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf there were no polls, and there had been no elections last year, this year\u2019s figure would be astonishing. But we do have the record of recent polls and elections, and it seems clear that Reform has peaked.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kellner went on to explain how significant this was in the first-past-the-post system. At last year\u2019s local elections, this helped Reform as they won a \u201cmuch higher proportion of seats than votes.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cIts support is now at the point where that bonus has started to shrink,\u201d Kellner wrote. \u201cIf more voters desert the party, it could suffer badly \u2013 falling short in many council and parliamentary seats that it would have won last year.<\/p>\n

Light relief for Labour?<\/p>\n

The other big story so far on Friday has been the huge losses for Labour<\/a>. The party have lost 261 council seats and lost control of eight councils. <\/p>\n

With further losses expected, including in Wales where the party are predicted to lose control of the Senedd for the first time, this is ramping up the pressure on Keir Starmer\u2019s leadership. <\/p>\n

However, Kellner reckons the results do show some small signs of positivity for Labour. <\/p>\n

He pointed out that losing half of the seats they were defending is actually not as bad as Labour\u2019s record in local council by-elections over the last 12 months.<\/p>\n

Kellner wrote: \u201cIn contrast to Reform, Labour has cause for relief, despite losing half the seats it was defending. It\u2019s bad \u2013 and in normal times it would be catastrophic \u2013 but it\u2019s not as bad as its record in local council by-elections over the past 12 months, where it hast lost three-quarters of the seats it was defending. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe overnight average conceals wide variations. Labour has lost all the seats it was defending in Wigan and Hartlepool, and all but one in Tameside, Dudley and Redditch. In other parts of England, where Reform is weaker, Labour\u2019s support has held up better.\u201d<\/p>\n

But he added that the results still show a \u201cstark warning\u201d for Labour, in the form of the Green Party. As highlighted by the BBC\u2019s John Curtice, it seems that whilst Labour are losing seats to Reform they are losing more votes to the Greens. <\/p>\n

So, although there\u2019s no denying who the big winners and losers will be in these local elections, it\u2019s worth remembering that there\u2019s always more to these results than meets the eye.<\/p>\n

You can read Peter Kellner\u2019s full Substack here<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As local election results continue to come in, there\u2019s no doubt that Reform will end the day having…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31902,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[4645,94,31,3996,95,408,5,6],"class_list":["post-31901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-uk","tag-headline","tag-keir-starmer","tag-labour-party","tag-local-elections-2026","tag-nigel-farage","tag-reform-uk","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116541039690027381","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31901\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}