How are the smaller parties doing?

James Crouch, head of policy & public affairs research, takes a look at how the Lib Dems, Greens and Reform UK are preforming.

Quite rightly, we devote a considerable amount of our time talking about the two major parties. Unless something quite extraordinary happens, everyone expects that the next prime minister will be either Keir Starmer or Rishi Sunak. Well, in truth, most people expect it to be Keir Starmer.

This is not to say that the smaller parties are completely inconsequential. We thought it was high time to review the performance of small parties in the light of the recent local election results, focusing on the Liberal Democrats, the Greens, and Reform UK.

Liberal Democrats

Currently, the Liberal Democrats are on 11% in the polls. This is a shade below what they got at the last election, but above what the party got in the 2015 and 2017 general elections. It  suggests they are still far from returning to the days when the party took over a fifth of the vote. On the other hand, we know that the Lib Dems tend to outperform their mid-term polling somewhat due to being in a strong second place in many areas. This local factor tends to only come into play in a short campaign.

To look at how they did in the local elections, we tallied up the votes in 580 wards where all three of the major parties stood in the 2024, 2021 and 2015 local elections (the last of which also took place on the same day as a general election). In these wards the Lib Dems went from 13.2% in 2015 to 16.5% in 2021, and now 18.5% this month.

This tells us two things. Firstly, the Liberal Democrats would be right to think they are improving on their very darkest days (up 5.4% on 2015), and up slightly over the course of the parliament (up 2.1% on 2021). However, they outperformed in these wards on what we know they did across the England and Wales in a general election on the same day in 2015. With this in mind, Ed Davey might have some concerns about the Lib Dems’ likely vote share in a few months’ time.

The benchmark for the Lib Dems this year is the 1997 general election, when Paddy Ashdown took the Lib Dems from 20 seats to 46. They took a considerable number of seats from the Tories on tactical voting despite a slightly disappointing outcome in terms of national vote share (they dropped 1 point to 16.8%). Before we even think about them trying this again, the Lib Dems are starting from a much lower base this time: 11.6% of the vote and only 11 seats.

While the Lib Dems will have high hopes of doing well and potentially even claiming some significant scalps at the general election – Jeremy Hunt being touted as the big one to get – they might have hoped for a more barnstorming set of council results to act as a springboard to success at the general.

The Greens

A party with, perhaps, a strong claim to expect great things at the next general election is the Green Party. They are currently on 7% of the vote in the polls, which would be well over double what they got at the last general election (2.7% if you include the Scottish Greens). This would be, by far, their best performance at a general election. For that reason, we should all be a bit cautious of forecasting it actually materialising.

Nevertheless, we have 424 wards where the Greens and the three major parties stood candidates in 2015, 2021 and 2024 local elections. In these wards the Greens scored, respectively, 7.8%, 10.3% and 13.5% of the vote. Once again, they are significantly up on what they got on the same day as the 2015 general election (up 5.7%) and also up on the 2021 local elections (up 3.3%).

In the past, Greens outperformed at a local level compared to how they have done nationally (they got 3.8% at the 2015 general election). Since they are now almost double locally what they got in 2015, that gives us reason to suggest that the 7% the Greens are doing in the polls is probably not too far from the mark. Perhaps, just perhaps, the Greens can expect their best general election result ever.

What is the impact of this? Well, we know that Labour suffers the most from the Greens doing well. Where the Greens are significantly up, Labour was down. The Greens are also doing best in urban areas, particularly metropolitan professional areas, but also more deprived areas too.

One thing that probably arrested Labour’s projected national vote share, however, is that the Greens were still up in suburbs and rural areas. These are the voters Labour will want to ‘squeeze’ and win back to maximise the electoral damage done to the Conservatives in the marginals.

Reform UK

Finally, we get to Reform UK. Here we have much less evidence, despite a lot more energy being spent debating the potential impact they will have. Generally, I am reluctant to draw too much from individual by-elections, such as Blackpool South which was conducted on the same day as the local elections. Nevertheless, it’s worth trawling through the limited evidence that we do have to see what we can gleam from what happened.

First, Reform UK is on 12% of the vote in the polls. It is currently appearing as the third largest party in terms of vote share of the United Kingdom, a feat that UKIP achieved in the 2015 general election when they took 12.6% of the vote. In terms of polling, that’s essentially where we are now.

However, unlike the Lib Dems and Greens, where the local elections were varying degrees of success, the evidence we have from ‘real’ votes is something quite different for Reform. We could only find 97 wards where all three major parties plus UKIP stood in 2015, and plus Reform UK stood in 2024. There simply wasn’t enough to work with to include 2021. It means the only benchmark we have is how did Reform UK candidates do compared to UKIP council candidates that stood on the same day they got a big chunk of the popular vote at a general election.

 So how did they do compared to previous UKIP outings? The short answer is not very well. UKIP got 17.1% in these wards at the 2015 local election, Reform UK got only 10.4%. Let us be clear, Richard Tice’s Reform is doing significantly worse than Nigel Farage’s UKIP.

But there is an interesting trend, and it’s unhelpful for the Conservatives. Reform is holding onto the UKIP vote better in professional areas than blue collar areas, so it is not mapping onto the same voter profile as the Brexit Party. In particular, the Reform is doing worst compared to UKIP – down 11% – amongst blue-collar homeowners. Nevertheless, here Labour is actually up the most, suggesting some of the voters that left Labour for pro-Brexit parties (UKIP, Brexit or Johnson’s Tories) might just be coming back where it matters.

Reform’s vote looks like it could easily get squeezed at the general election, but not necessarily to the Conservative’s advantage. 

Some final thoughts

Put together this probably confirms quite a few things that we already know from the polls.  The Liberal Democrats will probably take some seats from the Conservatives, but maybe not as many as Paddy Ashdown. The Greens will probably take quite a few votes from Labour, but the effect will be more to supresses their total vote share rather than their number of seats.

The most interesting thing is that Reform UK is doing worse than UKIP, which suggests the large number of potential Reform voters in the polls is relatively soft or reachable by other parties. Nevertheless, it also tells us that this should not automatically be seen as uniformly good news for the Conservative Party.

As originally seen in Lansons-Opinium Political Capital.