Local elections in England delivered record-breaking fragmentation of the vote
Hannah Bunting, Senior Lecturer in Quantitative British Politics and Co-director of The Elections Centre, University of Exeter
If there were such a thing as landslide victories for local elections, Reform could easily claim to have won one in 2025.
Out of the 1,641 seats available, Nigel Farage’s party came away with 677 – that’s more than 41%. The Liberal Democrats came second with 370 (a net gain of 163).
Overall, only a quarter of seats went to the two main parties combined – the Conservatives on 319 (down 677) and Labour 98 (down 189).
Looking at the ward-level results shows that the voting patterns in 2025 were very different to those seen at any other local election. It’s clear that this election broke records for the extent of fragmentation – a significant movement away from the dominance of the two parties that have dominated British politics for the past century.
There are several ways to measure this. One method is by looking at the two-party vote share, this is because fragmentation occurs when voters have a greater number of parties to choose from and opt for parties other than Conservative and Labour when casting their ballots.
2025 local election
Analysis of 1,282 wards in the 2025 local election shows the average two-party vote share was just 36.8%. That’s the lowest it’s ever been since Labour established itself as a main party. In fact, it’s never before been lower than 50% – and the 2025 figure is a full 20 points below the previous record of 56.9%, set in 2013 when UKIP did well.
Conservative + Labour vote share across 80 years of local elections
Another method is by looking at the vote share that the winning party received in each ward. If that’s high, it means most people rallied around a single party with their votes, whereas a low winner’s vote share means a person was elected with low levels of support from the electorate.
Remember, the first-past-the-post electoral system only requires a plurality of votes, and not a majority.
Winning vote shares across 80 years of local elections
Again, 2025 is the lowest in comparable history. The average winner’s vote share was just 40.7%, meaning three in five people did not vote for the party who won.
The most similar years were during the height of UKIP’s popularity, in 2013 and 2014, before the announcement that the Brexit referendum would take place if the Conservatives won the 2015 general election. Whereas for the locals it was Reform who won most of the seats, at the 2024 general election it was Labour.
However, in July 2024, it was the first time that the average winning party’s vote share fell below 40% in 30 years of general elections.
Fragmentation
We can also observe fragmentation using the majorities secured by winning parties – if they are decisive victories, there’ll be a greater majority.
The average winning majority was just 11.6% at the 2025 local election. It breaks another record, being the lowest since 1914, with 2005 and 2013 being the closest comparable years.
A final method considers the “effective number of electoral parties” (ENEP) at the ward level. This measure calculates how many political parties made an impact on a result, meaning that a high figure shows multiple parties received significant vote share, and a low figure denotes most people voting for a single party.
It’s no surprise that 2025 saw the highest ever average ENEP at a local election, coming in at 3.35. Only twice has this figure been above three, as in 2013 it was 3.02.
Effective number of parties across 80 years of local elections
Long-term trends
I’ve been talking about the fragmentation of British electoral politics for a long time. It was the topic of my PhD thesis, which I started writing (at least in earnest) seven years ago. It’s not a new phenomenon. Its shape, however, along with its impact, has morphed over the years.
We know it’s driven by a weakened attachment to political parties and that it’s exacerbated by electoral shocks. We know that it makes elections more competitive but that it decreases turnout.
The British electoral system is meant to produce decisive governments – at any level – and this tends to be centred around two main parties.
This meant that for a long time the Conservatives and Labour received the overwhelming majority of all votes cast, subsequently also winning almost every seat. Those days appear to be over. First came the fragmented general election, and now it’s at the local level too.
This article was first published on The Conversation
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What we are seeing extends beyond the fragmentation of the electoral system. It’s a marker of the fragmentation of the British State. Rejoice.
Haha! For ‘massive fragmentation of the vote’, read massive swing to Reform UK.
A straightforward swing from the Cons (-674) to their militant wing Reform (+677).
Indeed…with the Labour thickheads getting a kicking into the bargain. Wonderful result.
This time Reform got 10% more seats than votes while Labour got half as many seats as votes. In the most egregious example, Staffordshire, Reform won 72% of the seats on 41% of the vote. Perhaps London Labour will finally be interested in voting reform.
Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5yg467m8mjo
In 2024 Starmer’s Labour got elected on just 34% of the vote. Reform took 14% and got 5 seats, whereas the Lib Dems (sic) got 72 seats on 12%. Presumably you were aghast at the unfairness of those results too?
Yes. FPTP needs to go. No ifs, no buts.
‘Middle England’ is still very considerably hooked on ‘rule Britannia’ nostalgia. Especially the ‘red wall’, which I suppose is now best termed as turquoise.
If they remembered anything about the ‘Don Pacifico’ incident and read Palmerston’s sonorous parliamentary speech in defence of his government’s action – and, of course, they don’t and won’t! – they’d applaud in delight.
How much of ‘middle Wales’ is similarly hooked, I wonder? This time next year we’ll know!
The “ Thickheads” are those who’ve swallowed the snake oil Farage continually peddles.
Still only got 5 MPs though.
Five once again, for sure – until the next falling out!
Yep, can count them on one hand!
One new councillor suspended already ! Is this a record?
Par for the course, I’d say. Inevitably they had to root around in a sort time to identify candidates to stand in the English local elections, and, no less inevitably, some of those candidates will prove to be too ghoulish and depraved even for Reform to countenance.
Ah, you can now apply for a job that allows work from home but they want to ban work from home. And they want to ban the Ukranian flag being flown at council offices though no doubt putins useful helper will allow the Russian flag.
Apparently there was a EU flag fluttering in the breeze this weekend at Llanelli Town Hall. Funnily enough it has the very same colours as the Ukrainian flag.
I can see why Reform is so obsessed with the Union flag, what with it having the same colours as Russia’s.
There you go, easy mistake to make. Or, as the saying goes, “love is blind”.