Rishi Sunak claims the UK is heading for a hung a parliament – let’s check his maths

By Paul Whiteley, University of Essex

By common consent, the local elections on May 2 were a disaster for the Conservatives. The party lost a total of 478 councillors in the 107 councils up for election.

Labour did well by winning 186 councillors, as did the Liberal Democrats and Greens, winning 104 and 74 respectively. The Reform party captured 11 seats and independents a total of 93 seats. With significant losses in the mayoral elections and in elections for police and crime commissioners, it was a very bad day for the Tories.

Yet, Rishi Sunak has claimed the results suggest a hung parliament is the most likely outcome at the next general – a surprising assertion given that every opinion poll suggests era-defining defeat for his party. In making this calculation, he has perhaps leaned on estimates of the national vote shares taken by each party in the local elections.

According to Sky News, Labour’s share of the national vote was 35%. The Tories took 26% and the Liberal Democrats 16%. This is indeed very different to voting intention polls, which have put Labour’s lead over the Conservatives at about 20 points for some time.

The local elections saw a swing of 10% to Labour and, true enough, if this were replicated at the national level, it would very likely produce a hung parliament. However, winning a general election in Britain means capturing a majority of seats in the House of Commons, not a majority of votes in the country.

On two occasions since the second world war, the party winning the most votes did not win the most seats. This happened in 1951, when Labour lost, and again in February 1974, when the same thing happened to the Conservatives.

To be fair, there are important differences between the two types of election with respect to turnouts, the geography of the vote, the presence of independent candidates and also media attention. .

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