Reform and Labour tied ahead of local elections

Reform UK are tied with Labour, leaving the Conservatives lagging behind a week before the local elections, national voting intention polling shows. Britons will go to the polls on Thursday 1 May) when 1,641 council seats and six mayoral ones are up for grabs.

- ALICJA HAGOPIAN DATA CORRESPONDENT

A parliamentary by-election is also taking place in Runcorn and Helsby on the same day after former Labour MP Mike Amesbury stood down following his conviction for punching a constituent. This will be the first election since Labour’s landslide victory at the 2024 local and parliamentary elections, when the Tories lost 251 seats in the Commons.

The majority – 996 – of the council seats being contested this time are held by the Conservatives, who stand to lose the most in next week’s election.

Now, national voting intention polls show Reform have risen to tie with Labour – a major win for Reform and a further blow to the Tories. Both Labour and Reform hold 25 per cent of national voting intention, according to Techne’s latest tracker poll for The Independent, which samples around 1,600 people each week.