New YouGov analysis of the May local elections has found that 22% of Labour’s 2024 general election voters switched to the Green Party – almost four times the 6% who went to Reform UK – fundamentally challenging the dominant political narrative that Labour’s catastrophic local election results were driven by defections to Nigel Farage’s party and raising urgent questions about which direction any new Labour leader would need to take the party.
The polling, which also found that only 46% of Labour’s 2024 voters stayed loyal – compared to 55% of 2024 Conservative voters who remained with their party – lands at a critical moment. The Labour leadership contest is now formally underway following Wes Streeting’s cabinet resignation, as we reported in our full resignation coverage. The specific question of which direction a new leader should take the party – toward the voters who went to Reform, or toward the voters who went to the Greens – is no longer abstract. The YouGov data gives it a specific, evidenced answer.
The numbers that change the conversation
The headline figures deserve to be stated clearly because they cut against weeks of political coverage.
22% of Labour’s 2024 voters switched to the Greens at the local elections. 6% of Labour’s 2024 voters switched to Reform UK. That is a ratio of nearly four to one. For every Labour voter who defected to Farage, almost four Labour voters defected to the Greens.
The dominant political narrative since 7 May has focused on Reform’s historic gains – 1,440+ council seats, control of Essex and other county councils, Reform topping the national equivalent vote share as we reported in our full election results piece. That narrative has driven the Labour leadership crisis, with 90+ MPs calling for Starmer’s departure primarily on the basis that he cannot compete with Farage for the working-class communities Labour has lost.
The YouGov data does not dispute that Reform made historic gains. It simply shows that those gains came predominantly from the Conservatives and from new voters rather than from Labour. Labour’s losses went somewhere different.
Why this matters for the leadership contest
The data has specific and immediate implications for the contest between Andy Burnham and Wes Streeting that has been defining the Labour leadership debate.
Streeting’s pitch is modernising and centrist – NHS reform with private sector involvement, a fiscally credible economic programme, a politics of delivery rather than ideology. It is designed to appeal to the voters Labour lost to Reform and to the Conservatives. As we reported in our Streeting resignation piece, his resignation letter called Brexit a “catastrophic mistake” and positioned him as the candidate who could take Labour beyond its current coalition.
Burnham’s pitch – renationalisation, community ownership, devolution, proportional representation – is designed to speak to the communities that voted Leave and were abandoned by deindustrialisation, but also to the younger, progressive voters who feel Labour has abandoned them. As we reported in our Burnham electoral reform pledge, his Thursday commitment to PR specifically targets the Greens, who would benefit enormously from proportional representation.
The YouGov data suggests that if Labour’s primary loss is to the Greens rather than to Reform, then consolidating the progressive vote that has migrated leftward is arithmetically more important than winning back voters who went rightward. This is precisely the case for Burnham – and it is now backed by specific data.
What the Greens said
The Green Party’s response to the YouGov analysis was pointed. “Labour’s attempt to out-Reform Reform has been a spectacular failure, only playing into Nigel Farage’s hands,” a spokesperson said.
“The public are crying out for the real change the Greens have been campaigning for: rent controls, proper wealth taxes, lower bills, public ownership of water, and an end to support for genocide and illegal wars. People in Gorton and Denton saw that the Greens are a viable alternative and can win. It’s no surprise that many voters alienated by Labour are now backing us.”
The “attempt to out-Reform Reform” line captures something specific. Starmer’s government’s approach – tougher language on immigration, cuts to winter fuel payments, the “island of strangers” framing – was partly designed to demonstrate that Labour could hold the voters who might otherwise go to Reform. The YouGov data suggests those voters didn’t go to Reform in significant numbers in the first place. What Labour lost was the other end of its coalition.
The loyalty gap
The finding that only 46% of Labour’s 2024 voters remained loyal is striking in its own right. Labour won a 170-seat majority in July 2024 with 33.7% of the vote. Within ten months, fewer than half of the people who voted for it were still backing it at local elections.
The Conservatives, who suffered their worst election defeat in a century in 2024, retained 55% of their 2024 voters – a higher loyalty rate than Labour despite the scale of their national defeat.
The comparison suggests that Labour’s coalition was shallower than its landslide implied. Many of those 2024 votes were anti-Conservative rather than pro-Labour – a reading consistent with the YouGov finding that four in ten Labour and Lib Dem voters said wanting to stop another party from winning was one of the top reasons they voted the way they did. Tactical votes are inherently more fragile than sincere ones. When the immediate threat of the Conservatives receded, the tactical coalition dispersed.
The More In Common connection
The YouGov voter flow data connects directly to the More In Common hypothetical polling we reported in our Burnham bounce piece. That poll showed Labour jumping eight points to 30% under Burnham, with the Greens dropping four points and the Lib Dems two. The movement in that hypothetical was primarily from the progressive left back to Labour rather than from Reform back to Labour.
The two datasets are consistent. Labour’s problem is not primarily that it has lost voters to Reform. Its problem is that it has lost voters to the Greens and the Lib Dems, and that its remaining voters are disproportionately tactical rather than loyal. A leader who consolidates the progressive vote addresses the larger part of that problem. A leader who chases Reform voters addresses the smaller part.
As the Green Party’s spokesperson noted, the Greens’ Gorton and Denton byelection result – in a seat the NEC used as the reason to block Burnham – showed that the party can win directly against Labour. Whether that makes them more or less likely to stand aside in Makerfield in exchange for a credible PR commitment, as we reported in our Caroline Lucas and Greens Makerfield piece, is the immediate political consequence of data that Labour’s leadership candidates will have studied carefully this week.
