Liberal Democrat membership has halved in 5 years

According to BBC analysis of available data, the number of Liberal Democrat party members has almost halved in the last five years. Since Sir Ed Davey took over as president in 2020, the figure has decreased from just under 118,000 to 60,000. That is despite the Lib Dems winning their most competitive general election ever last year in terms of seats won.
"In real elections, more and more people are supporting the Liberal Democrats," a party spokesperson said.
This comes as the Green Party of England and Wales claims it now has 90,000 members, up 91% on 2020 figures. The Liberal Democrats saw a significant rise in voter registration in the run-up to Brexit in 2020, when the party was campaigning for a second referendum.
The decrease in paid-up members since 2017 has been masked by the inclusion of "registered supporters" in figures that have been published in the party's annual accounts each year since 2017. Registered supporters sign up for free access to briefings and events, but they are unable to vote or choose a candidate in leadership elections. The party has stated that the figure in the annual accounts refers to both members and supporters. However, it does not provide a breakdown.
'Public profile'
Prof Tim Bale leads the Party Membership Project, a joint initiative between Queen Mary University of London and Sussex University. Given the Lib Dems' electoral success, he said the decrease in membership was surprising, given that it would suggest "a faction on the upswing," which could mean more interested people are eager to join it. However, he continued, "There's a point to which surges into parties are triggered by public knowledge. And they don't appear to have a chance of being elected at the time."
In more good news for the Lib Dems, he said that a study carried out after the 2024 election showed that the Liberal Democrats were the most active of all political parties. According to figures gathered, a greater number of Lib Dem members (19%) had canvassed voters face to face or on the phone than any other group. "All sorts of study over time," Prof Bale said, "including in extremely close races, in close races; voter contact, whether it be face to face or simply leafleting does seem to make a difference."
For the first time ever in May's local elections, a Liberal Democrat spokesperson said, "We have a record number of MPs, the country's most popular party leader, and elected more councillors than Labour or the Conservatives."
"When it comes to real elections, more and more people are supporting the Liberal Democrats as the only party that will prevent Reform from turning Trump's America into Farage's Britain."
Other parties
Figuring out how many members a political party has can be daunting. Political parties are under no pressure to announce their membership figures, so they can only be revealed in annual accounts or in the case of a leadership race. Labour, the country's largest political party, on current publicly available data, has seen a decline in membership of 37% since 2020. The most recent published estimates put its membership at 333,235 at the end of last year, although reports have suggested that it may have decreased even more to 309,000. When the winner of the Labour leadership contest is announced later this month, an updated figure should be revealed by Labour.
Last year, Reform UK did not have a figure for membership in its annual accounts, but a ticker on its website shows that it has just under 260,000 members. The Green Party of England and Wales has seen a dramatic rise in membership and now claims that it has 90,000 members, up 54% from last year's figure of 58,322 in December. The Conservatives do not routinely release their membership figures, but last year's Tory leadership election is 40,000 fewer than in the 2022 election, and is still open. The party membership figures are not verified by external agencies.
Where we got our figures
The figure that has been used to determine the current number of the Lib Dems in the party's annual accounts is 83,174, which was the figure for December 2024. In a statement for the party treasurer in the Liberal Democrats in England, freelance journalist Adam Ramsay pointed out that the figure for paid-up members is given elsewhere. According to the publication, there was an "overall membership of 60K" in England, with 55,000—or 92% of them—in England—and supporter levels that "remained stable at over 20K." To get the membership figure for 2020, we looked at the number of ballot papers distributed in the leadership race, since only full members can vote. The party announced that it had printed 117,924 papers, the nation's highest ever number.