YouGov’s predictions for London elections are so close they look like a stick of rock

Labour looks set to take massive losses across London in the 2026 local elections, with the Greens in particular set to benefit from the demise. However, predicted results are currently too close to call across a remarkable number of boroughs.

That’s according to YouGov’s first-ever multilevel regression with poststratification (MRP) model for the London locals. The news follows hot on the heels of the pollster’s latest predictions for the Welsh Senedd elections, which likewise show historic Labour losses.

It’s really not looking good for Starmer here, is it, folks? Our hearts bleed, they truly do.

Vote-share upsets in London

Let’s start with the vote-share projections for London as a whole. Compared to the last council elections in 2022, Labour, of course show the biggest predicted drop – down 16 points to just 26%. The Tories, meanwhile, look set to take a nine-point dive to 17% total.

Next to those massive losses, the Greens and Reform look set to make the biggest gains. YouGov predicts that the Greens could land 22% of the vote share across the city. For their part, Reform could see a 14-point increase, netting it… 14%.

However, the number of votes each party receives is only half the story. Where exactly those votes come from is, of course, just as crucial.

You’ve only got to take a glance at YouGov’s vote share projection chart to see how close the race may be. It’s got more stripes than a seaside rock shop:

Too close to call

The data were drawn from over 4,500 London adults between 27 March and 21 April. YouGov stated that many of the boroughs look so close that it’s unwilling to project wins and losses for specific seats. Instead, it is:

focussing on support for the parties. Owing to the first past the post voting system, this does not guarantee a party will win outright control of a borough, or even the most seats, as happened in Bexley at the 2002 elections and Havering in 2022.

London has 32 boroughs up for grabs. According to the central vote share projections, the second-placed party is less than 2% behind the leader in 10 of those boroughs. Allowing for a 5% difference, 16 boroughs are too close to call, rising to 25 boroughs at 10%.

More to the point, 12 of the boroughs with a 5% difference between first and second place are split between the Greens and Labour. As such, many of Labour’s historic heartlands could ditch Starmer’s party for the left-wing alternative. 

Even Labour’s London mayor, Sadiq Khan, warned the PM as much. As Khan put it, Labour was “in danger of being stonked” in the capital on May 7. He also called out Starmer’s apparent obsession with aping the far right:

I’m slightly nervous with this ‘hero voter’ strategy, this understandable obsession to chase the Reform voter. This could lead to progressive voters feeling, wrongly, the Labour Party isn’t for them.

We’d contest the ‘wrongly’ bit, what with all the recent highly public immigrant-bashing. 

Best case/worst case

Unfortunately, it’s a bit early to call the exact magnitude of Labour’s London losses just yet. The close-run nature of this election means that there are massive margins for error in YouGov’s model.

For instance, Labour could feasibly lead in just 7 boroughs in its worst-case scenario. Conversely, that number could hit 19 at the upper-bounds of the projection. Meanwhile, the upper-end estimate could see the Greens win 8 boroughs, and Reform take as many as 5.

Even the smaller local independents could lead in 3 different councils, with YouGov explaining that:

Lutfur Rahman’s Aspire party is forecast to, once again, come first in Tower Hamlets, having become the first party other than the Conservatives, Labour or Lib Dems to win a London borough outright at the 2022 elections. We also expect the Havering Residents Association to again do well in their patch, but to come under a strong challenge from Reform UK.

Of course, from a Canary perspective, we strongly dislike the amount of Reform teal we’re seeing on the London projections. Our friends in the capital, for all their faults, deserve better than a bunch of racist, lying, racist, incompetent, racist, lazy racists to represent them.

Yes, that was too many ‘racists’. Given that we needed the extra space to add receipts, we put it to you that this is a Reform problem, rather than a Canary problem.

Featured image via the Canary

By Alex/Rose Cocker

Source link