Birmingham City Council will be changed beyond all recognition from May according to first local poll
05:36, 13 Mar 2026Updated 07:59, 13 Mar 2026
Map showing the election map for Birmingham and neighbouring council areas following the May 2026 elections.
Labour is set to be wiped out in the imminent all-out Birmingham City Council election, retaining just a handful of seats, according to polling shared exclusively with BirminghamLive.
The party, which has led the council for 14 years, is predicted to suffer a devastating collapse when voters turn out in May.
Independents, Greens and Reform UK will be the the big winners, according to the modelling.
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The Conservatives, currently second biggest group on the council, would also become largely redundant outside of Sutton Coldfield, while an expected surge in the Liberal Democrats vote is not reflected in the poll.
The council is predicted to end up with no political group in overall control, with parties likely to require coalitions or compromise to push through policies.
The polling has been carried out by Bombe, an audience insight specialist that is using a unique consumer behaviour model to predict voting.
The model will be updated weekly in the run up to the May 2026 elections as real-world data evolves, developing its accuracy over time and keeping it in step with public sentiment and shifts in the national mood, says Mike Joslin, co-founder and CEO.
The map above shows the changing make-up of Birmingham and surrounding council areas: Red areas – Labour. Dark grey areas – Other/Independent. Orange – Lib Dems. Green – Greens. Light blue – Reform UK. Dark blue – Conservatives. Hatched grey – two seat wards with different parties winning each seat.
We understand these early insights have already caused huge consternation, particularly among Labour campaign chiefs, who still hope to fare better than expected in the forthcoming elections.
Councils across the country go to the polls on May 7, some for all-out elections, while others will elect a third of their members. Birmingham, Sandwell, Walsall, Solihull and Coventry are among those with all out elections.
The national picture that emerges is seen to be a critical test of public opinion towards the Labour government and prime minister Keir Starmer in particular, with a leadership scramble expected if the party do terribly.
In Birmingham a year-long bin strike, the need for intervention by external commissioners and appalling examples of failure, poor leadership and mismanagement – some first exposed by BirminghamLive – have had a stinging impact on Labour’s reputation locally.
Party insiders warn that the message they are getting on the doorstep is unequivocal – ‘they don’t want Labour running the city any more,’ said one. ‘They want change.’
But where those traditional Labour votes end up is the big unknown and the new polling hints at where supporters will lean.
A wave of Independents – arranged in clusters, many of them pro Palestine and anti-Israel Muslims, several of them former Labour backed councillors who quit or were pushed out, plus well known community activists – are predicted to take the most seats across the city.
They are currently predicted to be especially strong in wards to the east and south east of the city, including Heartlands, Small Heath, Sparkbrook, Sparkhill, Alum Rock and several Yardley seats, while also performing strongly in the west and north west, including Handsworth, Holyhead, Lozells and Perry Barr.
The Greens are predicted to do well in wards like Bournbrook and Selly Park, Billesley, Glebe Farm and Tile Cross, Bordesley Green, Handsworth Wood and Soho and Jewellery Quarter – but also in traditional Labour strongholds like Birchfield, Aston, Nechells and Newtown which, if accurate, would see them emerge as the second biggest group.
Reform are predicted to become the third biggest group on the council, doing especially well in the Northfield and Erdington constituencies, including Frankley, Rubery and Rednal, Longbridge and West Heath, Erdington, Pype Hayes, Tyseley and Hay Mills, Kingstanding and Oscott.
There’s a similar catastrophic picture for Labour in neighbouring Sandwell, which is expected to fall to Reform, while Walsall will also fall to Reform, according to the modelling.
Solihull is predicted to stay under Conservative control.
The Bombe analysis predicts at this stage that many of the traditional left leaning Labour voters and progressives seeking a new political home will opt for the Greens, over the Liberal Democrats; while Reform will grab disaffected Tory and Labour votes.
Nationally, Labour is predicted to lose the vast majority of the councils it holds, and hundreds of councillors. Reform wins will be highly concentrated in out of city and standalone town areas, where they will gain directly from Labour as well as the Tories.
The Green vote will be highly concentrated in cities, where they are said to be gaining directly from Labour, posing a major strategic problem for the party.
The picture is further complicated in Birmingham by the role of the pro-Palestine and community-specific Independents.
The findings do come with heavy caveats. The predictions, though broken down into ward-by-ward results, do not yet take into account personalities, only parties or groups.
They also assume each party puts up a strong candidate in each ward, when in reality smaller parties might not be resourced sufficiently to stand in all 69 city wards, or promote their choices adequately.
However, we understand Labour, Lib Dems, Conservatives, Greens and Reform are all planning to put up 101 candidates each.
A full list of candidates will not be published until April 10. A major update of the Bombe analysis is likely to follow when those candidate lists are published.
Expected Birmingham City Council result (as polled at start of March, 2026)
No Overall Control
Other/Independents: 31 seats (+20)
Greens: 22 seats (+20)
Reform UK: 19 seats (+19)
Labour: 11 seats (-41)
Conservatives: 10 seats (-11)
Liberal Democrats: 8 seats (-5)
The analysis also confirms that ‘every vote really will count’. In some of the predicted results, the margin between first and second could be as little as one or two per cent – the equivalent of a handful of votes.
Bombe’s Mike Joslin said the elections in Birmingham and the wider West Midlands would be among the most competitive in the country.
He said: “Our ward-level model is built by benchmarking predictions against real-world election results. It has called the last 20 by-elections with 85% accuracy – including correctly calling the Gorton and Denton by-election – and that gives us confidence when we see the same voter dynamics emerging across the Midlands.
“In the region, we’re seeing…large numbers of closely contested marginals, and ward-by-ward races that are increasingly fragmented across multiple parties.
“Our model updates weekly as new data comes through, so we can track where sentiment is shifting and where the battleground is moving. But the big takeaway is that campaigning will matter: in many Midlands wards, a strong local ground game and credible candidate could be the difference between winning and losing.”
