Live Commentary
4:09pm Regarding Reform’s performance, this seat was a very left-wing seat. If Reform gains 15% nationally at the next election, they are likely to win a large number of seats. Even if you take away the 6% drop for the Conservatives, it’s still an overall swing to the right of 9%. The Workers Party didn’t stand at the by-election after getting 10.3% at the 2024 election in this seat, so left-wing parties were overall about 8% below their 2024 result.
3:39pm The Greens have GAINED Gorton and Denton from Labour, beating Reform by 12 points with Labour a further 3.3 points behind in third.
2:44pm The podium for the results announcement has been set up.
1:56pm The BBC reports a Greens source says they are very confident of a win.
1:17pm As a general comment on UK elections, it would be FAR better to have vote counting from booths reported publicly, which would usually give us a result in the first two hours after polls close. Instead all we have are party sources until the result is officially declared.
12:50pm A Reform source is claiming that Labour will come third.
12:38pm The BBC reports Labour sources say it’s been a good night for the Greens, turning out support in a way they wouldn’t be able to replicate at a general election according to these sources. Turnout for the by-election is 47.6%, which is actually UP 0.8% on the turnout in this seat at the 2024 general election.
11:30am The BBC says a result is expected between 3am and 4am UK time (2pm to 3pm AEDT).
Guest post by Adrian Beaumont, who joins us from time to time to provide commentary on elections internationally. Adrian is a paid election analyst for The Conversation. His work for The Conversation can be found here.
Polls close at 9am AEDT today for the parliamentary by-election for the UK Labour-held seat of Gorton and Denton. At the 2024 general election, Labour won with 50.8%, followed by the far-right Reform with 14.1%, the Greens with 13.2%, the Workers Party with 10.3% and the Conservatives with 7.9%. I previously related that Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham was blocked from running as Labour’s candidate for this by-election.
There have been two small-sample polls for the by-election. In the Omnisis poll, the Greens led Reform by 33-29 with 26% for Labour. In Opinium, the Greens and Labour were tied at 28% each with 27% for Reform. If Reform wins such a left-wing seat, it will highlight the UK’s bad first past the post system.
The Election Maps UK aggregate of national polls has Reform leading with 28.2%, followed by Labour at 19.8%, the Conservatives 18.8%, the Greens 14.1% and the Liberal Democrats 12.5%. There has been some movement to the Greens and against Reform in the last two weeks. But with FPTP, Reform still wins a clear majority with 348 of the 660 House of Commons seats.
Upcoming Welsh and Scottish elections
Welsh and Scottish parliamentary elections and English local government elections will occur on May 7. Labour has been the dominant party at Welsh elections since the first devolved election in 1999, winning half or just under half the seats. At this election, there will be 96 members elected in 16 six-member electorates by proportional representation. This reform scraps the FPTP seats.
The Election Maps UK aggregate gives the left-wing Welsh nationalist Plaid Cymru 28.2%, followed by Reform at 27.9%, Labour 17.7%, the Conservatives 11.6%, the Greens 7.4% and the Lib Dems 5.7%. Labour has been rising recently with a dip for Plaid and the Greens. Seat projections give Plaid 33 seats, Reform 32, Labour 19, the Conservatives nine, the Greens two and the Lib Dems one. If this occurs, Plaid and Labour combined would be able to govern.
Of the 129 Scottish seats, 73 are elected by FPTP and 56 are list seats, with the list seats used to maintain overall proportionality, so that parties that win a large number of FPTP seats don’t win many list seats. The Scottish National Party (SNP) has dominated since 2011.
In the Election Maps UK aggregate, the SNP has 34.5% of the vote in the FPTP seats, followed by 19.5% for Reform, 16.2% Labour, 10.3% Conservatives, 9.1% Lib Dems and 7.6% Greens. Seat projections give the SNP 58, Reform 23, Labour 17, the Conservatives 12, the Greens ten and the Lib Dems nine. If this occurs, the SNP will hold government with the Greens’ support.
Thai and Bangladeshi elections
Of the 500 Thai lower house seats, 400 are elected by FPTP and 100 by national PR. At the February 8 election, the conservative populist Bhumjaithai won 193 seats (up 122 since the 2023 election), the left-wing People’s 118 (down 33), the populist Pheu Thai 74 (down 67), the centre-right Kia Tham 58 (new) and the conservative Democrats 22 (down three).
This is the first time a conservative party has won the most seats in a Thai election in the 21st century. Bhumjaithai won 174 of the 400 FPTP seats and Kia Tham 56, while People’s won 87 and Pheu Thai 58. Popular votes in the FPTP seats were 29.9% Bhumjaithai, 23.6% People’s, 17.3% Pheu Thai and 11.5% Kia Tham.
Of the 350 Bangladeshi seats, 300 are elected by FPTP with the remaining 50 reserved for women who are appointed proportionally to the elected members. The February 12 election was the first since the July 2024 uprising that forced the authoritarian Awami League from power. The Awami League, which was the centre-left major party before it became authoritarian, was banned at this election.
The somewhat conservative Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) won 209 of the 299 FPTP seats (one seat’s election was postponed owing to a candidate’s death). The Islamist Jamaat won 68 seats. Vote shares had the BNP defeating Jamaat by 50.0-31.8.
Weird how it is the “far right” Reform Party but never the “far left” Workers Party or the “far left” Greens. Bias showing?
I just don’t see how 28.2% for reform translates into 348 seats.
The UK is surprisingly good at using tactical voting to limit the damage caused by FPTP. The 348 seems to be a calculation based on the assumption that no tactical voting happens, and no parties run dead in unwinnable seats to allow the non reform candidate to win.
Sure, there will be some seats where tactical voting doesn’t work (like if both greens and labour are polling 28 to reform’s 27, neither party or party’s voters will tactically vote for the other one and reform could win), but for the most part, tactical voting will work.
New Poll today from Baden-Württemberg in Germany, where the state election is on March the 8th, which has the governing Greens surging four to 27%, one point behind federally incumbent centre-right CDU/CSU on 28%, who lost one. The far-right AfD lost two to 18%, while the centre-left SPD falls one to 7%, the liberal-right FDP gains a point, barely holding on with 6%, and the Left loses one and a half to 5.5%.
Signs are (starting) to point towards a surge for the Greens, which polls may not pick up on, per recent elections such as the Australian Federal last year and the Dutch election last year where d66 managed to win from well behind.
Timeline for the Gorton and Denton by-election. Add 11 hours for AEDT.
10pm: Polling stations close and ballot boxes are transported to the central count location.
11pm – 1am: The “verification” stage gets underway. This is where officials confirm the number of ballots in the boxes matches the numbers recorded at polling stations.
1am – 3am: The actual counting of the votes takes place.
3:30am – 5am: If there is a clear winner and no request for a recount, the Returning Officer will be able to make their official declaration.
Paul Baker, this was explained in the previous UK thread. Reform need an explanation so readers know what they stand for. The Greens and Workers party are obvious.
Adrian
Except that Greens are not the same in every polity. In Germany, for example, they are centre-left not far left like most other polities. They are very ‘eco’ of course, but economically somewhat mainstream otherwise and on foreign policy quite centrist – a far cry from the UK and Australian Green parties which are riven with anti-Semitism.
Even in socialist France the Greens are nowhere near as far left as multiple other parties.
Besides, Reform really aren’t far right. They are now regularly being accused by the Conservative party of being socialist and not much different to Labour on various economic policies and nationalisations they profess to desire. They are more populist than Right-Left, but are starting to come up with actual policies to go with the slogans – suggesting they may be able to govern seriously should it come to it.
Gorton & Denton by-election
Really hard to predict. Suspect Labour have done enough to win it in the end, and will get a mini boost due to the narrative being that they are up against it and Greens are favourites (oh the irony, in a seat they historically had 70% of the vote in).
Really can’t see Reform winning it even if Greens and Labour are nearly evenly split – if only because their GOTV operation will not have been as good as the other 2 parties.
The constant barrage of lies and distortions and twisting miles out of context, the many things Matt Goodwin has said as a long-time conservative commentator, with simply not enough time and resources to rebuff effectively, will have hurt Reform.
Greens and Labour are both guilty of repeating these lines pretty ad nauseum, but at least Labour’s candidate seems otherwise fairly civil and decent. Green Party’s Hannah Spencer might be the ‘local girl’ and a plumber at that, but her vicious rhetoric (all while decrying ‘division’!), constant lies and utterly patronising manner towards the other candidates at the BBC debate (esp Goodwin of course), expose just what an awful person she is, albeit the most likely to be Gorton and Denton’s next MP.
Spencer really had no answers or defence when challenged on the Greens’ terrible policies such as the legalising of all hard drugs without exception and mass welcoming of immigrants without any serious changes to the broken system at all – let alone their economically bankrupt illiteracy. Little wonder that she didn’t want to take up Goodwin’s offer of a 121 debate.
Also – no Workers Party (George Galloway) or Your Party (Jeremy Corbyn) standing, deliberately to give Greens a clear run and take the very high Muslim and Communist voting blocs en masse (though older Muslims are reportedly sticking with Labour in larger numbers, and may have some influence on the younger family members).
But Worker’s Party took >10% at the 2024 GE – not much behind Green and Reform who both had c. 14% – so Greens in one sense haven’t completely taken the place by storm (unless the result shows they have, of course) when you take that into account along with their recent surge in national polling anyway.
Gorton and Denton is the 6th safest of Labour’s 411 seats won at the last election, and very far down the list of Reform target seats due to the 30% or so Muslim voters in the seat (though another large chunk is WWC of the sort that Reform do well taking traditional Labour voters from, but that’s probably c. another 30% or so).
But Labour really SHOULDN’T be losing this seat quite honestly. And if it means Greens are kept from having the endorsement this win would give them, I hope Labour win. Better still if Reform do, though I would fear for Matt Goodwin’s safety going forward, in a seat like this where pro-Gaza/anti-Israel sentiment is so high and where Goodwin himself is quite unequivocal on the rights and wrongs.
Thank you for the Oz adjusted timeline, Dingbat. Appreciate it. 🙂
Paul James Baker says:
Friday, February 27, 2026 at 7:57 am
Weird how it is the “far right” Reform Party but never the “far left” Workers Party or the “far left” Greens. Bias showing?
I say that The Greens are Far Left all the time. So, being a bit selective there in your criticism.
I, personally, would characterise Reform as Populist Authoritarian Right myself.
“Weird how it is the “far right” Reform Party but never the “far left” Workers Party or the “far left” Greens. Bias showing?”
Greens are the left, in this three way contest anyway. The Workers Party isn’t contesting the by-election while Labour are well to the right of centre. Reform are crazy far-right.
For those looking for live coverage, check out the free stream of Sky UK: https://news.sky.com/watch-live
Don’t be put off by the Sky News name, unlike Sky News Australia they aren’t owned by News Corp anymore (Comcast owns Sky UK now). Sky UK is more centre-right like CNN these days instead of being a far-right Fox clone like Sky Aus has become.
It is amazing isn’t it, how BTsays has sanitised ‘Reform’ party? 🙂
Darcy – In Baden-Württemberg, the Greens and CDU are in coalition. They will probably remain in coalition after the election, but who comes first decides who gets to be first minister. Currently, it is the Greens, but as Baden-Württemberg is a fairly rich and conservative area where the CDU have traditional done very well.
No, Labour will not win Gorton&Denton. The Labour candidate is not even popular and is a carpetbagger (she contested a seat in Cheshire in 2024 I believe) and blocking Burnham and the unpopularity of Starmer will cost them this “Safe” seat.
The Green party will win. I am hearing there are some reform voters going out their way to tactically vote for the Green party just to punish Labour because people are desperate to punish Starmer and want him gone, considering this is not a general election and will not change the government. There seems to be allot of anti-incumbency tactically voting.
Starmer is worse than Liz Truss politically, be is the most unpopular PM since Chamberlain I would argue
But regardless of the outcome FPTP needs to go, it is outdated and not democratic for someone to win when 2/3 vote against you. And since it is optional voting, only 10% of residents will probably back the winner, that is not democracy.
@Daniel T
Andy Burnham doesn’t live in the constituency either. If he was the candidate would you call him a carpetbagger? The reform candidate lives in London so he’s more of a carpetbagger than the Labour candidate.
In the UK there is no requirement for a candidate to live in the constituency they are standing in and no requirement for the MP to move into it once in Parliament.
ChricC, Yes that is why I think the MP for Leigh should resign and allow Burnham to recontest it (He did hold it prior to 2017 afterall)
But even Labour sources say they lost Denton. I am watching Sky News UK live coverage and everyone is saying the Green party will win an the main question is who will come 2nd place which I still predict Labour will come 3rd.
Green party candidate is a local so only she deserves to win.
Sounds like the Labour Deputy PM is basically conceding to the Greens.
By election live
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDvsBbKfLPA
Oof third place for Labour.
Thank you for the post Adrian.
Returning officer announcing that the Greens have won. 14980 votes.
The fact that this was ever competitive for Reform is a real indictment of FPTP.
as correctly predicted, Labour came 3rd. Starmer needs to go now.
The Greens have smashed it, winning by four and a half thousand votes. Preferential voting wouldn’t have changed the result.
Labour will find it extremely difficult to win back, as now any tactical voters will know where to put their vote to keep Reform out next time.
So Labor and Reform almost exactly split the far right vote, leaving the left to a big win. Remarkable night.
Labour’s vote cut completely in half. And according to the turnout which was about the same as the election, half of their 2024 voters are actively voting for other parties, not just staying home.
This was not competitive. Even with FPTP, Reform got trounced. The two polls put Greens 1 and 4% ahead of Reform. They beat them by 12. Polls said Greens over Labour by 0 and 7, beat them by 15%.
Expect some pollsters to fix their methodologies going forward to try to correct whatever is currently going wrong
It is crazy that FPTP has lasted this long when PR has 70/30 support across the whole country. We don’t like it. The UK doesn’t like it. The world doesn’t like it. The only explanation I can think of is that it is part of McSweeney’s small labour strategy to pull off wins while being unpopular.
1.9% for the Conservatives must be close to a record low vote for them. Ouch. Lib Dems also down there.
Monster Raving Loonies came 6th with 0.4% (behind Greens, Reform and the traditional three) – carn Sir Oink A-Lot. The five other parties behind them just need to pack it up – it’s over. How are the SDP still a thing in 2026?
Good Greens have won instead of Reform and Starmer and Labour party are taught a lesson.
25% swing against Labour candidate.
Now we’ll see if Labour trots out the old ‘it’s just a protest vote’ line or takes the lesson seriously.
Seems to me that Andy Burnham was saved by Sir Keir of the Labor Together fraud, I mean faction, I don’t think he would have won, Labor is just too on the nose.
2nd by-election where the media talks up Reform only for voters to swing to the left.
Yep – all-time worst for the Conservatives. Previous worst was 2.1%, North Down 1995 – considering the traditional parties barely exist in Northern Ireland, that only half counts. Not worst for the Lib Dems, though – the list of major party results <2% is a few for Labour and a long tail of Liberal / Lib Dem, right down to 0.9%.
I do have to laugh at how out of touch the party is with their own voters when they were pulling out lines like “a vote for the Greens is a vote for Reform”
Pretty sure a lot of Labour members are pissed because they voted for Labour and instead got Reform
“2nd by-election where the media talks up Reform only for voters to swing to the left.”
This does seem to be a trend in media in general but especially english language media when it comes to Europe. During the many trials of France’s parliament I don’t think I saw one that mentioned the left is the majority party in their parliament. Even 2022 was portrayed as a landslide for the RN, who were and still are only the third largest party.
“Muslim and Communist voting bloc”
Is this an either/or.
The hordes of Muslim Communists ruining the Reform Party. Hilarious.
One thing on those results, it looks like the “Reform might win” risk was massively overblown.
If you define the “progressive” vote as the Green plus Labour vote, then there’s no way you can slice or dice those numbers so *someone* doesn’t defeat Reform. No tactical voting required for that.
(Of course, you have to consider the UK Labour Party as “progressive”, which they’re clearly not – hopefully this will frighten them into not just being neo-Conservatives).
UK Labour is a right wing party. It is no longer a left wing party. The same applies in Australia with Labor.
“It is crazy that FPTP has lasted this long when PR has 70/30 support across the whole country.”
Nick Clegg could probably have got PR in if he’d stood firm on the Tory collaboration agreement he made with them that produced not the PR referendum in his party platform.
Instead he was bullied into making it an Australia style voting referendum and that was never going to pass. Labour abstained officially supporting either side, the Tories said No and that was the end of it.
It also helped the far-right get experience in lying in referendums, which came in handy for their ruining the UK through Brexit.
Great result
Ghost of Whitlam,
At the time of that referendum, the Tories’ opponents were fragmented – Labour, LibDems, SNP, Plaid, Greens, one or two others – while the conservative side was mostly a monolith, so naturally they opposed a system that allows preference swapping. Now, with the rise of Reform, it’s coming back to bite them on the arse.
I love the smell of schadenfreude in the afternoon.
This result proves that you do well when you have an electorate that is inclined in your direction, Left in this instance, and a charismatic and dynamic leader, such as The Greens now have.
Watch Nigel Farage spin this as a win for Reform. 😉
GoW, AM
I had almost forgotten about that referendum – it was one of Nick Clegg’s demands to form a Coalition with Tories after the 2010 election wasn’t it? And yes – a great disinformation campaign followed – “You should only be able to have one vote – this will allow some people to have two or three votes!” or words to that effect. It was also interesting that at the 2015 election it was the Lib-Dems who got punished by the electorate for ‘austerity budgets’, going from 56 seats to near-extinction on 8 in FPTP, while David Cameron took the Tories from minority to majority. Of course he had to get some disaffected UKIP voters by promising to hold an absurd referendum on Brexit that he knew wasn’t going to succeed. How did that go for him?
I think a bigger issue is that 650 seats is probably too many for a population of 70 million. In the same way that 435 in the USA is too few for a population of 340 million (will get to 1 million people per House member if they don’t expand!).
FPTP is particularly unsuitable in the UK – I realise people do a lot of ‘tactical voting’ but I think the point has been made before that the UK overall possibly has a more left-leaning populace than France or Germany but the quirks of their electoral system mean they generally have conservative governments. Maybe the answer is a hybrid model like New Zealand, with half the MPs from electorates and the other half from ‘lists’ to balance the numbers up to proportional representation. At this point in time I think the Tories might agree to that because under the current system they could be wiped out at the next election, maybe even emulating the 1993 Canada election when the ruling party went from a majority in the 295 seat House to just 2 seats.
C@tmomma,
In a perfect world, elections wouldn’t be decided by the charisma of the leaders. Things like policies and party ideals would be what counts.
But this is the real world. Sadly.
(Not that I’m complaining about this particular result, of course.)
If there’s a time for UK Labour to meaningfully change direction it’s now. That makes 2 by-election losses in seemingly safe seats, the other being Runcorn and Helsby lost last year to Reform.
It can’t seriously keep on going as it’s going until July 2029 and then pretty much lose almost everything. These are seats that were above 50% in the Primary Vote for Labour in 2024, and they only have about 65 of those left.
@Rocket Rocket at 4:57pm
MMP voting for the UK could maybe work, although the Conservatives and Labour are far more antagonistic to each other than the CDU and SPD in Germany and would never form a “Grand Coalition”, so some deadlocks might occur, especially if both of them also refuse to form a coalition with Reform or the Greens.
Still though, a parliament that reflects the polling situation moment with 650 MP’s elected according to MMP with a 5% Threshold or win at least 3 Constituency seats, we’d have (according to the latest YouGov poll):
155-160 Reform
115-120 Labour
115-120 Conservative
110-115 Green
90-95 Lib Dem
20-25 SNP (Presumably they’d win enough constituencies in Scotland to be apportioned List seats)
5-10 Plaid Cymru (Presumably the same in Wales)
With the remainder Northern Ireland seats. That seems like a pretty messy situation, especially when Reform + Conservative don’t even get a majority on their own.
Labour + Green + Lib Dem Coalition possible? That’d get close to a majority.
@Kirksdale In Germany, parties (South Schweslig voters association) like PC and SNP are counted as minority parties and get elected when they win a quota for 1 seat, excluded from the 5% hurdle.
@Darcy
Ah, thanks for clearing that up.
I suppose in a theoretical UK MMP voting system that PC and the SNP would be guaranteed seats in a similar situation.
“it was one of Nick Clegg’s demands to form a Coalition with Tories after the 2010 election wasn’t it”
Yes. I left out a line in my post without realising, which that it was the Lib Dem policy position to have a PR referendum, but he was bullied by the Tories during negotiations and he compromised on AV.
So none of the three largest parties supported AV yet they had a referendum anyway. Then the Tories did the same thing with Brexit.
“Maybe the answer is a hybrid model like New Zealand, with half the MPs from electorates and the other half from ‘lists’ to balance the numbers up to proportional representation.”
I would split the UK into groups of approximately 2 million, producing 36 regions. So you would end up with a list of regions approximately: Northern Ireland (1), Wales (1), Scotland (4), London + Outer Territories (5), South East-Oxford (5), South West-Cornwall (3), East-Cambridge (3), West Midlands-Birmingham (3), East Midlands-Nottingham (3), Yorkshire (3), North West-Manchester (4), North East-Newcastle (1)
11 per region makes 396 seats. Minor adjustments of the lowest and largest regions and getting 400 seats total, with one speaker to make a majority of 200 vs 199.
As a sample, the results would be:
Wales – Labour 4, Tories 2, Reform 2, Plaid 2, Lib Dem 1.
NI – Sinn Fein 4, DUP 3, SDLP 1, Alliance 1, UUP 1, TUV 1.
Scotland (hypothetical average) – Labour 4, SNP 3, Tories 1, Lib Dem 1, Reform 1, Green 1.
England (hypothetical average) – Labour 5, Tories 3, Reform 1, Lib Dem 1, Green 1.