Reform UK Leads April Polling Averages Before Voting Tomorrow
Reform UK entered voting tomorrow with 26.4% in April polling averages, ahead of Labour on 19.1% and the Conservatives on 18.6%. The spread across the six main figures was only 14.2 percentage points, a tight field that will be tested against real votes across large areas of England, Scotland and Wales.
The numbers come from April 2026 polling averages compiled from 10 polling companies: BMG, Find Out Now, Freshwater Strategy, Good Growth Foundation, Ipsos, J.L. Partners, More In Common, Opinium, Techne and YouGov. Professor Sir John Curtice, the polling analyst producing the Projected National Share for the, is one of the figures being watched as those results come in.
England's First Past the Post test
England’s local council elections use First Past the Post, while Scotland and Wales use voting systems that reflect how people vote more closely. The source says that difference is likely to produce numerous highly disproportional results in England, where parties may take control of councils even when they did not win the most votes.
Under that system, councillors may also be elected on tiny vote shares. For readers trying to read the map as results arrive, that means raw vote share and control of a council may point in different directions on the same night.
May 2025 and April 2026
The polling landscape has already shifted once before. In May 2025, the Projected National Share recorded five parties on over 10% of the vote for the first time, and those five parties sat within 19 percentage points of one another.
By April 2026, that gap had narrowed further in the latest averages, with Reform UK on 26.4%, Labour on 19.1%, the Conservatives on 18.6%, the Greens on 15.6%, the Liberal Democrats on 12.2% and Others on 8.1%. That is why the Projected National Share and the National Equivalent Vote are being treated as the key measures for judging whether the local election results broadly match the polling picture.
Professor Sir John Curtice's figures
The Projected National Share and the National Equivalent Vote have each been published every year for around the last 45 years. This year, the source says both are expected to reflect an even more fragmented political landscape, with English local election results watched closely as they come in.
For voters and party strategists, the immediate question is not just which party tops the polling averages, but whether that support converts into council control under a voting system that can reward concentration and punish spread. The count in England will show whether Reform UK's 26.4% holds up when ballots are turned into seats, and whether the gap between vote share and power opens wider again.
