News / Politics
Greens tipped for tight victory in mayoral election
The West of England mayoral election is a five-way marginal that could be one of the closest polling-day battles in British history, with an expert predicting that the Greens are set to claim a tight victory.
An independent statistician has crunched the numbers from voting patterns at previous local and national elections in the region and concluded that all five party candidates have a chance of being the next metro mayor from May.
But the Conservatives are least likely to win, while the one independent is expected to trail a distant sixth.
Nigel Marriott’s forecast has the Greens – whose candidate is Mary Page – in the lead on 24 per cent of the vote, which would be an incredibly low figure to win an election, such is the even split.
Labour (Helen Godwin) and Reform (Arron Banks) are each predicted to receive 20 per cent, the Lib Dems (Oli Henman) 19 per cent, the Tories (Steve Smith) 12 per cent, and independent Ian Scott taking five per cent.
Marriott said the election on May 1 “is shaping up to be one of the most unpredictable elections I’ve ever seen”.
He has used four different statistical models, given each a weighting depending on how accurate he thinks they will be, and then calculated the weighted average for each party to give the overall percentages.
Two of the models actually have Labour in front, with the Greens and Reform on top in the other two.
Marriott said: “On average, the Greens come first with 24 per cent but Labour, Lib Dems and Reform are all on or around 20 per cent which is nothing in the grand scheme of things.
“What I will say is the Green and Lib Dem estimates are fairly stable across the four models unlike the Labour, Conservative and Reform parties which vary a lot between the models.
“The Conservatives are behind in all models but I am happy to call this a five-way marginal with the Greens most likely to win and Conservatives least likely.”
The metro mayor is the elected head of the West of England Mayoral Combined Authority comprising Bristol, South Gloucestershire and Bath & North East Somerset councils.
Marriott said: “I am forever struck by Weca’s political diversity.”
In the nine local, national and EU elections from 2010 to 2024, five different parties topped the polls – the Conservatives and Labour both finishing first on three occasions, with the Lib Dems, UKIP and the Greens receiving the most votes once.
The Bath-based statistician made the most accurate prediction of the 2019 general election and also correctly forecast the Greens would win the most seats in last year’s Bristol City Council’s local elections but fall short of a majority.
Main photo: WECA
Read next:
Our newsletters emailed directly to you
