Local elections 2025: Latest polling predicts outcome of May 1 elections in Buckinghamshire

But is all that about to change as Bucks voters prepare to head to the polls for the local elections on May 1?

Tory leader Kemi Badenoch was certainly cautious when she spoke to Tory activists in Beaconsfield last month, warning that the elections would be ‘extremely difficult’ for her party and referencing the ‘greatest defeat in its history’ at last year’s general election, which Labour won by a landslide.

However, she also told the LDRS Bucks was a ‘beacon’ to other areas and praised its leader Martin Tett for running ‘a very good council’.

But will the Tories keep control?

The Conservatives’ existing majority on the council is huge with the party occupying 105 of the 147 seats.

By comparison, there are 20 Independents (including Wycombe Independents), 13 Liberal Democrats, six Labour, one Reform UK and one Green councillor.

However, at the next election in just over two weeks, ward boundary changes cut the total number of seats on the council by 50.

This means voters will only elect 97 councillors across the county’s 49 wards, each of which will be represented by one, two or three councillors.

Polling by Electoral Calculus suggests the Tories’ majority will slip, but that the party will still take 59 of the 97 seats up for grabs – therefore retaining control of the council.

The pollster predicts the Conservatives will largely avoid the threat of Reform UK, forecasting only four seats for Nigel Farage’s party in Bucks.

Its multi-level regression and post-stratification (MRP) analysis also predicts 19 Liberal Democrat councillors, 11 Labour, four ‘other’ and not a single Green.

Electoral Calculus polled 5,421 adults online between March 1 and 10 this year across areas scheduled to have elections this year.

What do the Bucks opposition leaders think?

Lib Dem group leader Susan Morgan told the LDRS she ‘didn’t read a lot into polls’ but that she was confident about her party’s chances.

She said: “This is the best chance we have ever had of getting a majority and taking the administration from the Tories because we have never run a local election with Sarah Green as an MP in Chesham and Amersham.”

Ms Green’s by-election win for the Lib Dems in 2021 saw her overturn a majority of more than 16,000 in a consistently Tory constituency.

Last summer, the blue wall of Buckinghamshire’s Tory MPs crumbled further as five Labour MPs were elected across the county, including Milton Keynes, with only Beaconsfield and Mid Bucks remaining Conservative.

Bucks Independents leader Stuart Wilson told the LDRS the May 1 election was ‘all to play for’ with nearly 40 Independents standing in wards across the county.

The councillor said the MRP polling failed to take the dozens of Independents into account, ‘not least because it was commissioned before the candidates were known’.

He added: “Taking that into account, it shows how close the election will be once you note the existing Independent seats with a very good chance of being held and the gains likely to be made, predominantly from the Conservatives.”