Reform UK wins council by-election in boost ahead of local elections
Reform UK has secured another council by-election victory, adding to a series of recent gains that have put the party’s local electoral organisation under renewed attention.
The latest result came in East Markham on Bassetlaw District Council, where Reform candidate Matthew Evans won the seat after defeating the Conservatives in a contest that produced a substantial change in the voting pattern compared with the previous election.
Evans received 436 votes, equivalent to 49.6% of the ballots cast. The Conservatives finished second with 250 votes, or 28.4%, while Labour received 151 votes and the Greens 42. The result represented a gain for Reform from the Conservatives.
For Reform, the timing is significant. The party has been attempting to convert the support it has received in national politics into a stronger network of councillors and constituency organisations. A sequence of council by-election gains gives the party additional evidence that its support can translate into local contests.
However, one by-election cannot establish a nationwide trend on its own. The result needs to be considered alongside other recent contests, the party’s national polling position and the very different circumstances that exist from one council ward to another.
A striking result in East Markham
The East Markham contest was particularly notable because the Conservatives had previously held the ward by a substantial margin.
According to the Association of Liberal Democrat Councillors’ by-election results, the Conservatives won 66% of the vote at the previous contest, while Reform had not previously stood there. In the September 2026 by-election, Reform took 49.6%, while the Conservative share fell to 28.4%.
Reform therefore entered the contest without an established vote in the previous election and emerged with almost half of all votes cast.
The party described the result as a 44-point swing from the Conservatives towards Reform. Nigel Farage subsequently highlighted the victory, while Robert Jenrick, the Conservative MP for Newark, also commented on the result and described the swing as substantial.
Farage interpreted the result as evidence of a wider decline in Conservative support. That is a political interpretation rather than something that can be established from one ward alone.
The underlying numbers nevertheless make the result difficult to ignore. A party starting from no previous vote share secured first place, while the Conservatives experienced a major reduction in their share.
It follows other Reform by-election gains
The East Markham result was not an isolated Reform success during September.
On 10 September, Reform won two other council by-elections.
In Eckington South and Renishaw on North East Derbyshire District Council, Reform’s Jamie Hodgson received 426 votes, representing 40.2% of the vote. Labour finished second on 28.1%, while the Conservatives received 21.6%. Reform gained the seat from Labour.
On the same day in Hutton and Locking on North Somerset Council, Reform candidate William Jones won with 706 votes, or 38.5%. The Liberal Democrats came second with 33.3%, followed by the Conservatives on 15.3% and Labour on 7.2%. Reform gained the seat from the Conservatives.
Taken together, those contests show Reform winning seats that had previously been held by different parties.
That is potentially important organisationally. It suggests the party is not simply benefiting from one particular type of local electorate.
At the same time, other September by-elections produced different outcomes. Labour retained Burnage in Manchester, while the Conservatives held Haverhill West in West Suffolk. Reform also failed to win several other contests.
The wider picture is therefore mixed rather than uniformly favourable to any single party.
Why council by-elections matter
Council by-elections are often treated as political indicators because they provide a series of relatively small-scale contests between major and minor parties.
They can reveal whether a party has an active local campaign operation, whether its candidates can attract votes outside traditional strongholds and whether national political arguments are influencing local behaviour.
But there are important limitations.
A council by-election usually involves a much smaller electorate than a general election. Turnout can be low, candidate personalities can matter considerably and local issues may have greater importance than they would in a national contest.
The political circumstances surrounding the vacancy can also affect the result.
For that reason, the East Markham result demonstrates that Reform can win a contest in that particular ward. It does not, by itself, establish how the party would perform across every Conservative-held ward or across the country.
The wider local-election backdrop
The significance of the result becomes clearer when viewed against Reform’s performance in the 2026 local elections.
Before those elections, YouGov’s modelling suggested that Reform was capable of making substantial gains in several regions.
Its West Midlands MRP, based on fieldwork conducted between late March and late April, projected Reform to be competitive across all 13 councils being contested in the region. The model projected Reform to have the highest vote share in 11 of the 13 councils, although YouGov explicitly cautioned that close contests made individual outcomes difficult to determine.
The polling model was not a forecast of actual council control. Instead, it estimated party support across the relevant areas.
That distinction matters because local elections are affected by factors that national polling cannot fully capture.
Nevertheless, the modelling illustrated the scale of the potential change in the local political landscape.
Reform’s organisational challenge
Winning council seats is only one part of Reform’s broader challenge.
The party has expanded rapidly since its breakthrough in the 2024 general election. It now has to manage councillors, recruit candidates, build local associations and maintain campaigning capacity across hundreds of constituencies.
That requires a different political infrastructure from that needed to generate national media attention.
The recent by-election victories provide evidence that Reform can organise effective campaigns in particular areas. But sustaining that performance over a much larger number of wards will require resources and local activists.
The party has also attracted substantial political attention because of its financial position. That gives it opportunities to invest in organisation, but it has simultaneously faced controversies over donations, polling and internal management.
The practical question for Reform is therefore whether financial resources and national visibility can be translated into consistent local campaigning.
The Conservatives face a different challenge
For the Conservatives, East Markham provides another example of a local contest in which support has moved away from the party.
The Conservative share fell from 66% at the previous contest to 28.4% in the by-election, according to ALDC figures.
That is a significant change within the ward.
But the Conservatives are not absent from the political competition. Recent national polling has shown their support recovering to levels close to Reform’s.
A YouGov poll conducted on 20 and 21 September put Labour on 23%, with Reform and the Conservatives both on 21%. It was the first YouGov poll in 18 months to record the two parties level.
This creates an interesting contrast.
At local level, Reform has recently taken several seats directly from the Conservatives. At national level, the two parties remain close in some polling.
The difference illustrates why local by-elections should not automatically be treated as miniature general elections.
Labour also remains part of the equation
Labour’s position is similarly varied.
In Eckington, Reform gained from Labour, with Labour’s vote share falling substantially compared with the previous contest. Yet Labour held Burnage in Manchester, where it received 42.1% of the vote.
The contrasting results demonstrate the importance of geography.
Reform’s strongest performances have often occurred in areas where dissatisfaction with the established parties is already significant. But the party has not displaced Labour everywhere, nor has it displaced the Conservatives everywhere.
Local political competition remains highly fragmented.
What the result means ahead of future contests
The East Markham victory gives Reform another piece of evidence that its support can translate into council representation.
It also adds to recent gains in North East Derbyshire and North Somerset, making September a notable month for the party in council by-elections.
Yet the result should be interpreted carefully.
A by-election is a snapshot of one ward under particular circumstances. It can reveal something about voter behaviour, campaigning and party organisation, but it cannot determine what will happen in a much larger election.
For Reform, the immediate value may be organisational as much as numerical. Each elected councillor adds experience and visibility at local level, while successful campaigns can provide activists and candidates with experience that may be useful in future contests.
For the Conservatives and Labour, the results provide reminders that their established local support can be challenged by newer political forces.
The broader political question is whether these individual contests eventually form a consistent pattern across different regions and types of electorate.
For now, the evidence shows that Reform is capable of winning council by-elections, including seats previously held by both Conservative and Labour candidates. It also shows that the party’s performance varies considerably between wards.
The next stage will be to see whether Reform can maintain this level of local organisation and support across a much larger number of contests.
The East Markham result is therefore significant as another local victory for Reform UK, but its wider meaning will depend on what follows. In British local politics, a single by-election can create momentum and attention — but sustained electoral strength requires repeated victories across different places, electorates and political circumstances.
