More in Common's April MRP

Key findings

• Reform UK is in first place with 180 seats, while Labour and Conservatives are in joint second with 165.
• Labour could lose 246 seats, including 153 to Reform UK and 64 to the Conservatives.
• Progressive defections could cost Labour 68 seats, as swings to Liberal Democrats and the Green Party enable Reform, Conservatives and the SNP to pick up seats.
• Ten cabinet ministers could lose their seats - nine to Reform UK, while Wes Streeting would lose his seat to an independent candidate.

Party	Seat Count	Change from 2024 result	Implied Vote Share
Reform UK	180	+175	24%
Conservative	165	+44	24%
Labour	165	-246	24%
Liberal Democrat	67	-5	13%
SNP	35	+26	2%
Independent	10	+4	4%
Plaid Cymru	5	+1	1%
Green	4	nc	8%

A splintered electorate

The Labour, Reform and the Conservatives tie at 24 per cent of the vote and the increasing efficiency of Reform UK’s vote would enable them to narrowly win the most seats in this model.

However, the narrow differences between the three main parties' vote shares also suggests that small swings either way could have a dramatic effect on the distribution of seats.

In 285 seats, the winner would secure under a third of the vote, and the model also estimates 233 parliamentary seats would be won with a margin of less than 5 per cent with 101 seats essentially too close to call (less than 2 per cent margin). A swing of 6-7% for any of the main parties could see them win an overall majority.

In short, the model points to a UK political system more fragmented than at any time in history - and presents Britain’s first-past-the-post system with a challenge it has not faced before.

Labour losses

Labour would risk losing scores of seats in their historic heartlands. Their Red Wall gains would not only be reversed but Labour would lose more of them than in 2019, keeping only six of the 42 original Red Wall seats. The Welsh Valleys, including Merthyr Tydfil, seat of Labour’s first leader, would fall almost entirely to Reform UK, while the SNP would regain much of the Scottish Central Belt. 

Full list of Labour losses:

• 153 seats to Reform UK

• 64 to the Conservatives

• 23 to the SNP

• 5 to independent candidates

• 1 to Plaid Cymru

• 1 to the Liberal Democrats

Ten of the 23 Cabinet Ministers would lose their seats, nine to Reform UK, including Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner, Cabinet Office boss Pat McFadden and Home Secretary Yvette Cooper. Health Secretary Wes Streeting would lose his seat to an independent candidate.

• Deputy Prime Minister, and Housing Secretary, Angela Rayner (Ashton-under-Lyne, Reform UK Gain)

• Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton South East, Reform UK Gain)

• Home Secretary Yvette Cooper (Pontefract, Castleford and Knottingley, Reform UK Gain)

• Defense Secretary John Healey (Rawmarsh and Conisbrough, Reform UK Gain)

• Education Secretary and Minister for Women and Equalities Bridget Phillipson (Houghton and Sunderland South, Reform UK Gain)

• Energy Secretary Ed Miliband (Doncaster North, Reform UK Gain)

• Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde, Reform UK Gain)

• Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy (Wigan, Reform UK Gain)

• Health Secretary Wes Streeting (Ilford North, Independent Gain)
• Chief Whip Alan Campbell (Tynemouth, Reform UK Gain)

Conservative struggles

Meanwhile the Conservatives would barely recover from their record defeat in 2024, gaining some seats from Labour and the Liberal Democrats but only matching their second worst result in modern history on 165 seats, and losing further seats to Reform including Chief Whip Rebecca Harris and Shadow Environment Secretary Victoria Atkins.

Liberal Democrats steady

The Liberal Democrats would hold almost all of their record-breaking gains from last July, losing just five seats to the Conservatives, one to Reform UK while gaining one seat from Labour.

The SNP would re-emerge as the largest Party in Scotland on 35 seats to Labour’s 15.

Reform gains

As well as holding onto their existing seats, the model predicts that Reform will gain 175 new seats around the country, including in every region of England and in Wales.

The model also estimates that in a General Election Labour would lose the seat of Runcorn and Helsby - which will be contested in a byelection on the 1st May - with a 19.5 point two-way swing to Reform UK.

Labour’s 2024 gains evaporated

Under this model, just 35 of Labour’s 218 gains at the last election would stay with them, with their 2024 gains lost in multiple directions. 

Of these seats:

• 64 would return to the Conservatives
• 23 would return to the SNP
• Reform would gain 96
• Plaid would gain one seat

Progressive backlash hurting Labour

While Labour is losing most seats to Reform UK, our national voting intention polling shows that the party is losing almost as many votes to other parties on the left. While this is not translating into seat gains for the Liberal Democrats and the Greens, bleeding vote share on their progressive flank is eroding Labour’s margin. In a General Election these ‘progressive defections’ would enable Reform and the Conservatives to win additional seats from them. 

This MRP model, estimates there are 68 seats where Labour’s vote loss to the Liberal Democrats and Greens would cause them to lose a seat. In more than half of these cases, this results in a Reform win - in a further 17 the Conservatives win the seat from Labour because of progressive losses from Labour.

If Labour held onto progressive votes, the overall seat total would be different, with Labour emerging clearly as the largest party:

Seat total if there was no loss of votes from Labour to Liberal Democrats and Greens:

• Labour 233
• Conservative 148
• Reform UK 144
• Liberal Democrat 66
• SNP 21
• Other 10
• Plaid Cymru 5
• Green 4

Britain’s most fragmented electorate

The MRP model also reveals the extent to which Britain’s electorate has fragmented, which would result in the lowest vote share and seat count total for the two largest parties of any election in modern times, with 285 seats being won on under a third of the vote.

This fragmentation manifests itself in some extreme three-way and even four-way marginals. For example, in Dover and Deal, the model estimates the first, second and third parties are all within 0.4 per cent of each other.

In total, there are twelve seats where the three top parties are within two per cent of each other.

• Dover and Deal
• Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale
• Stevenage
• Bournemouth East
• Central Ayrshire
• Hinckley and Bosworth
• Isle of Wight West
• Camborne and Redruth
• Peterborough
• Loughborough
• West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine
• Gedling

In Wales and Scotland there are some very close four-way marginals - most notable is Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale, where the first and fourth parties are within 1.4 per cent of each other.

In Wales and Scotland, there are some very close four-way marginals - most notable is Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale, where the first and fourth parties are within 1.4 per cent of each other.

Luke Tryl, UK Director at More in Common, said:

FAQs and Methodology

What is an MRP?

‘Multilevel Regression with Post-stratification’ (MRP) uses data from a voting intention poll to model how people will vote based on their demographics, voting behaviour and information about their constituency. These results are then applied to the demographic and electoral makeup of each constituency to make a constituency-level estimate. The model is 'multilevel' because it uses both individual and constituency-level data.

How is this different from your normal voting intention poll?

The voting intention regularly published by More in Common is a national estimate based on a representative sample of at least 2,000 people. It indicates roughly how many people in Great Britain intend to vote for one party or another. This is simple to calculate and allows us to track changes through time.

But if you want to estimate a national seat count, this isn’t as useful. No political party performs equally well in every seat, because their supporters are not evenly spread across the country. For example, a 70-year-old man who didn’t go to university and lives in a small village has a higher likelihood of voting Conservative than a 25-year-old woman renting a flat in a major city.

The benefit of MRP is the ability to use information about the different people who live in every constituency across the country to estimate how many people will vote for each party.

How does the model account for those who don't know how they will vote?

When we ask people their voting intention, some people say they don’t know. We push them to say who they would vote for if they were forced to choose, and we use this response as their expected vote. Some people, when asked to imagine that they were forced to choose, still don’t know who they would vote for. Using our MRP model, we’re able to make a better guess at how these “double don’t knows” might end up voting. When training the model to predict people’s voting intention based on their demographics, voting behaviour and information about their constituency, we excluded the responses of people who didn’t know who they would vote for (after the squeeze) from the training data. When we apply the model to all the voters in the constituency, it effectively means we estimate the votes of people who don’t know, according to how people like them (in terms of demographics and past voting behaviour) but who do know, intend to vote. So if someone lives in a rural area, is over 75 and voted Conservative in 2024, the model uses the fact that most over 75s in rural areas who voted Conservative in 2024 and do know who they’ll vote for say they will vote Conservative, to guess that if they do vote it will likely be for the Conservatives.

How does this model differ from More in Common’s previous models?

A key part of MRP is the post-stratification, which applies predictions to a dataframe of who lives in each constituency. Our post-stratification frame relies on demographic data from the census, which is then extended using data from the British Election Study Post-Election Random Probability Survey which allows us to model which types of people voted for different parties in previous elections.

As the British Election Study Post-Election Random Probability Survey for the 2024 General Election is not yet available, we have used our post-election polling to approximate the demographic characteristics of those who voted in 2024. This is the best currently available data that we have but we will update our post-stratification frame once the BES data for 2024 is available.

Our voting intention polls during the 2024 General Election campaign used the actual candidates who were running in the respondent’s constituency - this model assumes that all parties are fielding a candidate in each constituency.

As a modification from our MRP model in December, the model now adjusts the performance of smaller parties where the model detects local dynamics led to a relative over-performance at the General Election. For example, this has the effect of boosting Liberal Democrat vote shares in certain constituencies.

Is this a snapshot or a projection?

With four and a half years before the next General Election must be called this model is unlikely to represent anything close to the ultimate result and should not be seen as a projection of the election.

As well as not knowing what might happen between now and 2029, we also don’t know which parties will stand in different seats, what tactical voting might look like exactly and who will ultimately turn out to vote. What’s more, the degree of electoral fragmentation makes individual seat dynamics even more difficult to project than previously.

Instead this model provides a baseline for how the electorate has fragmented since the last General Election and what the implications of that might be for the make up of a future Parliament. We will continue to update it throughout the next Parliament and introduce new data as it becomes available.

Why does the model show X party winning in Y constituency?

MRP models are a good way to estimate how the parties might perform across different constituencies based on their demographic makeup. However, they don’t account for local factors that impact a small number of constituencies, such as a popular incumbent, well known or controversial council policy. These factors make it difficult to predict exact vote shares even in the best of times, but even more so when three parties are polling at over 20%, making three-way races more common. Therefore it would be a mistake to draw too much from the estimated vote share in an individual constituency.