Polls and predictions

The 2024 baseline

At the 2024 general election, Josh Simons (Labour) held Makerfield with a majority of 5,399 on a turnout of 52.5%. Labour holds many of the Greater Manchester seats around it; Reform UK was the runner-up in 2024.

Where to follow live numbers

We do not run live odds on this site. For up-to-the-minute prices and analysis, the following sources are widely read and free:

• BBC News politics for headline coverage and the official count.
• politicalbetting.com for daily commentary on the market.
• Oddschecker UK politics for live bookmaker prices.

What to watch

The Makerfield by-election is shaped by an unusual piece of political mechanics: a sitting MP, Josh Simons, stood down on 14 May 2026 so his party's most popular non-MP can contest the seat. The last comparable arrangement was the 1965 Leyton by-election, when Patrick Gordon Walker was given a seat after losing his own. He lost Leyton too. That precedent is mostly invoked as a warning, although the parallels are not exact: Burnham is not parachuting in from outside the region but from Greater Manchester, where he is already an elected officeholder.

The 2024 baseline frames the contest cleanly. Labour took 45.2% to Reform UK's 31.8%, a 13.4-point lead translating into a 5,399 majority on 52.5% turnout. The Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and Greens between them took 22.1%. By-election turnout is normally several points below the equivalent general election, and that is the first thing to watch on the night. A turnout of 38-42% would compress both sides' organisational advantages and make the result more responsive to enthusiasm than registration.

The second thing to watch is where that 22% goes. Reform are the most natural beneficiary of any squeeze on the Conservative vote, and the campaign rhetoric so far has framed this as a binary contest. If even half of the non-Labour, non-Reform vote consolidates behind Reform, the headline 13.4-point lead narrows fast.

The third is ward-level. Robert Kenyon is a sitting Wigan councillor in Bryn with Ashton-in-Makerfield North, so his local organisation is concentrated there. Hindley, Hindley Green and Abram are the other wards where Reform polled best in 2024. Worsley Mesnes and Winstanley were Labour's strongest. The headline margin on the night will be a weighted average of those ward outcomes; the swing patterns within the count tell a different story to the top-line figure.

The betting markets currently price Burnham around 4/6 (roughly 60% implied probability) with Reform between 6/5 and 11/8. Polymarket's prediction-market consensus sits in a similar band, with Burnham above 60%. Those prices have held firm since the writ was moved on 19 May; the campaign has not yet produced any movement the markets consider material.