Hope this finds you well and you’re looking forward to the long weekend!
In this week’s newsletter:
Make or Break(erfield): In what looks like the most important by-election in decades, what does the picture look like for Andy Burnham and Reform? And how is Burnham viewed by the public?
Who is the average British voter? Our latest report, No Overall Control, lays out what each party’s core supporters look like in 2026.
Does Reform have a ‘Tommy Robinson problem’? Tommy Robinson is unpopular with most Britons but more Reform voters have a positive view. How can the party distance itself from Robinson and his views without alienating their own base?
If you’d like to hear more about all of this, plus where the public really stand on Eurovision, be sure to listen to this week’s episode of the Opinion Brief Podcast:
If you're a political nerd like us, by-elections are always exciting. But you’d probably have to go back fifty years to find one quite as consequential as Makerfield next month.
In many ways, the seat is tailor-made for Reform UK. It is 97 per cent white, older than average, has fewer graduates than the national norm, and was one of the most heavily Leave-voting constituencies in the country back in 2016. While it was once considered a Labour safe seat, the party’s vote share dropped significantly at the last election, and their majority was cut to around five thousand votes.
It was Reform's 13th closest second place in 2024, and 7th closest where Labour was in first. In this year's local elections, Reform secured more than twice Labour's vote in the area: 51 per cent to 24 per cent, and won every single ward with at least 40 per cent of the vote.
To put it plainly, you would instinctively expect a by-election in this seat to be a Reform gain - a far easier task than other recent by-elections in nearby Runcorn and Helsby (which Reform won) or Gorton and Denton (which went Green). Our April MRP projects that Reform would take 46 per cent of the vote in a General Election in Makerfield, with Labour on just 21 per cent.
But that ignores one crucial fact: the Burnham factor. In 2024, the Manchester Mayor significantly outperformed how well Labour would go on to poll in the General Election two months later. This was by around 20 points, both across Greater Manchester as a whole and in the borough of Wigan specifically. In focus groups across the area, people often praise Burnham for championing Manchester and the North, and can point to tangible local improvements, particularly on transport.
And Burnham’s appeal goes beyond Greater Manchester. Our national polling this week found that, in a hypothetical general election where Burnham was leader, Labour could beat Reform by 3 points, compared to the current situation where they are trailing them by 6 points. In this hypothetical scenario, the polling suggests Labour might win back some of the voters they’ve lost to left and right: 44 per cent of the voters Labour have lost to the Greens or Liberal Democrats say they would vote Labour again if Burnham was leader; 21 per cent of the voters they’ve lost to the Conservatives or Reform would also return.
When we ask the public to describe Andy Burnham in a word, the top results are overwhelmingly positive: “Ambitious”, “Hopeful” and “Northern” are the top three, although “Opportunist”, “Arrogant” and “Chancer” also feature heavily.
That said, people recognise that being Mayor and Prime Minister are different roles and some question whether he could replicate his success in Greater Manchester nationally. A large part of Burnham’s appeal rests on championing the North and fighting Westminster. If he is successful in Makerfield, it could be challenging to sustain his reputation as an outsider from within the House of Commons, especially during this era of anti-politics.
What we do know for certain is that the stakes couldn’t be higher. If Reform win, they will have beaten the strongest Labour candidate available on his home turf, and their momentum will look unstoppable. If Labour win, it will prove that unlike Keir Starmer in the recent local elections, Andy Burnham is able to stop the rise of Reform and the contours of the next General Election will be upended.
Who is the average British voter?
Earlier this week, we released No Overall Control, our in-depth briefing on the 2026 elections and the state of British politics. The headline finding is that insurgency is now very much mainstream: while challenger parties like Reform and the Greens made gains across the board, establishment parties now look increasingly niche and regionalised.
Who’s voting Reform?
Reform UK won more wards than any other party in England and is now the only party with a strong voter base in every part of the country. They’ve done so by building a coalition of financially squeezed Britons who feel the system has stopped working for them. In doing so, they've now displaced the Conservatives as the default party of the right across large parts of the country.
Their typical voter is Gen X, more likely to be retired and a homeowner who is feeling the cost of living squeeze - and less likely to be a graduate than any other party's supporters, with just a fifth having been to university. Reform has gone further than the Conservatives ever did in realigning British politics: where the English Red Wall collapsed in 2019, Labour's Welsh Valleys remained standing. However, in these recent local elections, Reform broke through into the Valleys too. In Scotland, Reform now has a higher vote share among nationalist voters than the Conservatives managed in 2021.
It’s now hard to find a part of the country where Reform UK is not a competitive party - something that can’t be said for Labour or the Conservatives.
Who’s voting Labour?
Labour is under siege on every front simultaneously, and is contracting to its core - younger, urban, graduate renters in the cities - while its post-industrial and working-class heartlands have collapsed almost entirely. Its vote share is nearly twice as high among graduates as non-graduates (29 per cent to 15 per cent).
Labour is being squeezed by the Greens in cities, by Reform in the Red Wall, by Plaid in Wales, and from every side in Scotland's Central Belt. Seven in ten of Labour's 2024 General Election voters chose a different party in the English locals.
Labour voters are now more likely to be non-white than the rest of the population. They are particularly more likely to be from Black ethnic groups than an Asian background, in part because of the party’s loss of support among Muslim voters to the Greens and Independents and some loss of support among Hindu voters to the Conservatives.
Looking at our Seven Segments, Labour has lost many of its ‘Red Wall’ Rooted Patriots to Reform UK, while its Progressive Activists are switching to the Greens. Now, the Incrementalist Left are the remaining foundations of Labour’s shrunken base.
Who’s voting Conservative?
Many now see Reform UK as the main party of the British right, and the Conservatives are retreating to affluent pockets - Wandsworth, Kensington and Chelsea, the Scottish Borders - while their losses were most dramatic in post-industrial areas. Their voters have a higher graduate concentration than in previous elections, are more financially comfortable and more likely to own a home.
Perhaps most significantly, they are less likely to be Brexit supporters than previously: in 2019 and in 2024, around three in five Conservatives had opted to leave the European Union. However, looking at those who are currently planning to vote Tory, only 46 per cent supported Brexit, while 41 per cent were Remainers.
In other words, Conservative voters increasingly look like Liberal Democrats, and it is in the Blue Wall battlegrounds that they are now finding their strongest support.
Who’s voting Liberal Democrat?
Arguably in these elections, the Liberal Democrats did what they do best: consolidate their support in areas with local party strength. This was often at the expense of the Conservatives. The Liberal Democrats' vote is sticky and locally entrenched rather than driven by national swings.
The party’s support is most concentrated in affluent commuter towns and suburbs: Richmond, St Albans, Sutton, Cheltenham, Winchester, South Cambridgeshire.
Demographically, the median Liberal Democrat voter looks like a non-urban graduate. While Labour still leads among urban graduates, the Liberal Democrats lead among graduates who live in small towns.
Who’s voting Green?
The Green Party is moving away from being the party of older, environmentally conscious ruralists. Their base is now increasingly formed of more of the types of voters they won over in Bristol Central at the last election - young urban renters who are frustrated about housing costs and economic inequality. They are the main destination for left-wing disillusionment with Labour in cities.
Green voters are young, often in their 20s - urban, graduate or student - privately renting and struggling financially. This reflects what we heard in focus groups in these elections: young city dwellers who felt that they’d “done everything right” and worked hard, but were still unable to get on the housing ladder.
Being a young person that has done everything right, get good grades, go do a good degree. We still can't afford to buy a house. Still having to live like a student in a flat share [...] Every January like clockwork, I start looking at how can I leave the UK? How can I leave the NHS? I don't care anymore. I don't want to be here.
Shaikho, Tottenham
Using our Seven Segments, Progressive Activists make up a growing proportion of the Green Party’s support base - nearly half of their voters. In fact, while left-leaning segments (Progressive Activists and Incrementalist Left) made up three fifths of the Greens’ voter base in 2024, they now make up three quarters. Zack Polanski has expanded the party’s left-leaning, engaged base.
The full briefing has lots of in-depth analysis of these elections, and what they mean for the future of British politics. You can read it here:
Tommy Robinson’s return to the spotlight with the ‘Unite the Kingdom’ march last weekend highlights a potential split in Reform’s support base. Party figures have made it clear that Robinson is not welcome in Reform.
That view aligns with where most Britons are. Fewer than one in six Britons have a positive view of Robinson and most Britons said that those marching on the Unite the Kingdom march were not speaking for them.
But Reform supporters are outliers here. Reform voters who backed the party at the last election most strongly approve of Tommy Robinson, with the majority of them saying they have a positive opinion of him (53 per cent). On the other hand, they also have newer supporters who are more divided in their opinion. Looking at supporters who have switched to Reform since the last election, positive perceptions of Tommy Robinson drop to 38 per cent and one in four have a negative opinion (24 per cent).
While Nigel Farage needs to keep his core base motivated to avoid them seeking out a more hardline alternative, he also needs to attract the much larger group of more moderate voters who want to see politicians take a firm line against prejudice and have little time for figures like Robinson. While supporters of figures like Robinson have an outsized presence online, their views are far removed from the wider public.
Thanks so much for reading! As always, let us know what you think, and if you have any thoughts for the podcast please drop us an email at hello@moreincommon.com.
If you haven’t had a chance to listen to the podcast this week, you can find it here:
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