ASHTON-IN-MAKERFIELD, England — The data is clear: Andy Burnham’s path to No. 10 Downing Street runs through the most difficult political terrain he could have chosen.
Voters across the United Kingdom have fled Labour since the 2024 general election, instead embracing the populist right Reform UK Party and its anti-immigrant message. That’s turned many strongholds into politically dangerous waters for Labour — and Burnham has picked the constituency that’s the hardest of the lot for him to win.
The Greater Manchester mayor bet his political future on forcing a special parliamentary election to give himself a path back to Westminster, where he hopes to challenge Prime Minister Keir Starmer for the chance to lead the country. But out of all the seats in his region, Burnham has chosen to run in Makerfield, which has a largely white, Christian, working-class electorate, and is the hardest for Labour to hold on to, according to modeling by POLITICO’s polling partner, Public First.
The party’s collapse in the region has turned Makerfield decisively into Reform territory — as witnessed in Reform’s sweep of last month’s local elections in the area — and Public First’s model shows Labour faces a steep challenge to win in Makerfield again. No constituency in Greater Manchester has worse odds for Labour against Reform than Makerfield, and the seat is among the worst for Labour in the entire north of England.
But that risk also comes with upside: Surviving that test could give Burnham and his supporters the ability to claim they know how to win back the voters who have left Labour ahead of the next general election, not expected until 2029.
Burnham’s popularity is thanks to his track record of urban improvements, which have earned him the nickname of “The King of the North” and give him a fighting chance at winning the seat. Public First’s model, which uses national-level polling to model public opinion at a constituency level, underscores Burnham’s ability to outrun his party: Accounting for his individualized support, the model shows a race that shifts from a Reform blowout into something more akin to a coin flip.
“If Burnham wins, and continues on to be prime minister, he will face accusations that he lacks a mandate. While a single constituency is likely not enough to silence those accusations entirely, the criticism would have a sharper edge if Burnham had run in a safer, central Manchester seat,” said Seb Wride, head of polling at Public First. “Makerfield could prove a useful small-scale test of Burnham’s national election strategy: That his personal brand can beat out Reform’s momentum.”
A bulwark for Labour
For more than a century, the area has exclusively elected Labour MPs, but that loyalty began to fade in recent years. Former MP Yvonne Fovargue saw her margins erode from dominant 30-point wins to an 11-point victory in 2019. Fellow Labour member Josh Simons — who stood aside to trigger the Makerfield election for Burnham — succeeded her in 2024 with a nearly identical vote share, while Nigel Farage’s Reform UK gained nearly 19 points from what the Brexit Party had earned in 2019.
Public First’s model shows Reform has continued to gain, and is now dominant.
If a general election were held today, the model projects Labour to win only about one-quarter of the vote, while Reform would garner more than 40 percent. That doesn’t predict the by-election itself — special elections are unique, including because of lower turnout than general elections, and the model can’t account for hyperlocal factors.
But it’s clear that many Makerfield voters are now spurning their former party.
“I’ve always voted Labour. This is the first time I’m not voting Labour, I’m gonna vote Reform,” said Tom, a voter who participated in a POLITICO focus group last week conducted by Public First. (As a condition of the research, only participants’ first names are made public.) Tom said he doesn’t necessarily agree with Reform on everything, but that “it’s more how bad the country’s got over the years with Labour in charge. There needs to be change.”
That discontent showed up in last month’s local elections in the area, in which Reform dominated as voters pulled sharply to the right. Reform won all eight main Makerfield wards in those local Wigan elections.
Uphill battle
Things have changed so dramatically in recent years that Public First’s model now shows Makerfield as the single worst Greater Manchester constituency for Labour in its fight against Reform.
In fact, across all 154 seats in the North — covering North West and North East England, Yorkshire and the Humber — Makerfield is 127th for Labour’s baseline margin in a general election in Public First’s model. That puts it in the bottom 20 percent.
Looking only at those seats where the race would be between Labour vs. Reform, Makerfield ranks in the bottom 15 percent.
That’s due to the composition of its electorate: Out of 575 parliamentary constituencies in England and Wales, Makerfield has the 6th highest percentage of Christian voters, 9th highest share of semi-detached housing and 14th highest for driving a car to work.
It’s also in the top 10 percent for apprenticeship qualification and Level 2 qualifications and nearly 95 percent white.
Put simply, Makerfield is composed of exactly the kinds of voters who have fled Labour after being longtime supporters.
“The country just needs a bit of a shake-up … even if it’s just for, like, one term,” said Dan, another Makerfield voter in the focus group who said he was switching from Labour to Reform in Thursday’s by-election: “I voted for Labour God knows how many times, and I’m still struggling.”
Why Burnham has a shot
There is good news for Burnham within the mounds of polling results and complex modeling: Voters in Makerfield, and across the region, like him a lot more than they like Labour.
They even like him more than they do Farage — and certainly a whole lot more than they do Starmer.
That works in Burnham’s favor because Makerfield voters recognize that Thursday’s by-election is not really about sending him to Westminster to represent them. The contest is effectively a proxy for a national fight that could end with the country having a new prime minister, and a lot of local residents are interested in having Burnham be that leader.
“He just comes off as if he cares and as if he wants to sort the country out,” said Mandy, a Makerfield voter in the focus group who said she was voting for Burnham in part out of hopes he could become prime minister. “He’s willing to give up what he was doing before in Manchester, the mayor, to go into this election, so he obviously cares for what’s going to happen in the country.”
Burnham, with the home-field advantage, is able to distance himself from Labour. And that, in turn, gives him a strength in Makerfield that a generic Labour politician wouldn’t have.
A national U.K. edition of The POLITICO Poll, conducted from June 7 to 9, found Burnham with a 14-point edge over Farage, 57 to 43 percent, on the question of which of them would make the better prime minister. The gap was even stronger in support of Burnham (61) over Starmer (39).
Running those numbers through Public First’s model suggests Makerfield would back Burnham for prime minister even more strongly than those national numbers.
In a direct match-up with Farage, about two-thirds of Makerfield voters would back Burnham as the better prime minister. And 77 percent would prefer Burnham to Starmer.
That suggests a real path to victory for Burnham — and, if he does it, a possible claim to being the leader who can bring voters back to Labour.
It’ll just take the strength of his personal brand to overcome the drag of the party.
