May 2026 elections analysis: England, Scotland and Wales

Attached are a full deck of results, indexed by nation.

What we wanted to find out

• What factors influenced voters as they headed to the polls in England, Scotland and Wales?

What we did

• Large scale polling in England in areas where local authority elections were held, as well as in Scotland and Wales. Fieldwork was conducted 22 April – 5 May 2026.
• Sample sizes: 2,153 in England (incl. London), 1,556 in Wales, 1,603 in Scotland. Data weighted to be representative of each nation.
• In order to inform polling hypotheses and response options, x2 focus groups were held in Wales and x3 in Scotland in March 2026. Baseline/preliminary polling was also conducted around the same time, including various open response questions.

What we found

• The common thread in this election was the collapse of the Labour vote and to a lesser extent the consolidation of Reform. Even if Reform face more opposition than last year, the fragmentation and lack of co-ordination of the anti-Reform vote in England remains a significant advantage for the party and puts them on course for power nationally.
• Across the UK, the Labour 2024 vote primarily stayed at home or voted for another party. Unlike their right leaning equivalents, most Labour left defectors remain open to returning to Labour at the next general election. However, at the moment there is a values based disconnect: they report no clear sense of what the party stand for and report a general sense of the government, fairly or not, as being “Tory lite” or more right wing than they expected. For the wider population, though, it is issues of competence, cost of living and migration that damage the party brand.
• Plaid Cymru coalesced a energised anti-Reform tactical vote in Wales. This was a significant factor in their victory and Reform’s fall in the polls in Wales since November last year; as big if not bigger than as any factor related to Welsh Labour or Plaid themselves.
• The SNP benefited from a large chunk of Labour 2024 switchers amid dissatisfaction with UK Labour. That said, voters in Scotland had a particularly low sense of what Scottish Labour stood for during the campaign. The salience of pro-EU attitudes to the SNP vote remains underrated, and is in fact more important to SNP/Labour switchers than their position on Scottish independence.
• Anger over immigration/asylum and a frustrated desire to try someone new remain the two big recruiting sergeants for Reform. Concerns over competence and governing experience linger among their (mostly Conservative) target voters, while ideological extremes and their proximity to Trump damage them with the wider population.