After weeks of debates, policy launches and polls, election day is almost upon us. With the national polls barely budging throughout the campaign, it might feel like the overall result of this election is a foregone conclusion.
But as multiple constituency-level predictions produced in recent weeks have shown, this election will see hundreds of seats changing hands – some for the first time – and a surge in the number of marginal constituencies across the country. Some household names look set to lose their seats, and smaller parties – Reform and the Greens in particular – look set to win in parts of the country they haven’t before. The impact of constituency boundary changes also means that some seats will be electing an MP for the first time.
With 650 mini contests taking place around the country, it might be hard to know where to focus your attention. Not to worry – UK in a Changing Europe has done the hard work for you. We’ve come up with our list of ‘seats to watch’ on the evening of 4 July, through to the early hours of the 5th. We’ve come up with 10 categories of constituency, all of which tell us something important about the state of play at this election. Some are those bellwether seats which will tell us just how successful Labour have been at breaking through and hoovering up Conservative votes during the last six weeks, while others are those which, if won by the Liberal Democrats, will tell us just how much Ed Davey’s high-octane campaign has swayed voters.
Others may not see huge swings on election night, but the underlying changes we see there in party support and vote share will tell their own story about the impact of factors like education and ethnicity on voting behaviour at general elections.
Use the links below to navigate between our categories and see which seats we think will be interesting to keep an eye on during election night. We’ll be updating the categories and adding more seats in the run-up to polling day.
- Blue Wall frontline: These are Conservative-held seats where the Liberal Democrats are the primary challenger and can claim the seat on a swing of 10% or less. If Ed Davey is having a good election night, these are the seats which should be falling in his favour.
- Red Wall defences: These are those former Labour strongholds in the North, Midlands and Wales which the Conservatives infamously flipped (many for the first time) on election night of 2019. We’ll be looking to see not only if Labour can win these seats back, but the vote shares each party gets- this will tell us whether the Red Wall looks set to be a new bundle of marginal constituencies.
- Conservative/Leave redoubts: These are seats which have been solidly Conservative for at least the last four elections, and which all voted Leave to a greater extent that the national average in 2016. At any other election, there should be no doubt that these go blue- if the Conservatives start to lose here, they are likely in trouble across the whole country.
- Conservative/Strong Leave seats: These are Conservative seats which have previously been Labour, and where ‘Leave’ won over 65% of the vote in 2016. If Labour begins to win these seats back from the Conservatives, it’s a sign that the Tory Brexit coalition has almost certainly broken down.
- Diverse battlegrounds: We know that Labour has a grip on most of the UK’s ethnically diverse seats. Local elections, however, indicated that the party might see a backlash in those areas of the country with large Asian and Muslim populations, in response to its position on the conflict in Gaza- we’ll be keeping an eye on those seats to see if independent candidates and smaller parties manage to mobilise this sentiment against Labour candidates. Meanwhile, there are several Conservative seats where the incumbent’s majority is under 30%, and the Asian population is above 20%- any shift in this vote might disrupt Labour’s attempts to win the seat.
- Graduate-heavy seats: Recent elections have shown that education is now a key dividing line among British voters, with university graduates and those without a degree often having very different political preferences. These are seats which, despite having different levels of socioeconomic development and diversity, have high concentrations of graduates- will the education divide mean they become increasingly likely to vote progressively?
- Labour breakthrough: These are Conservative-held seats in England where the incumbent has a majority of less than 30%, and Labour came second in 2019. However, Labour has not won the seat since 2005, or maybe ever- can they make a breakthrough at this election?
- Major change seats: On the back of the 2023 boundary reforms, some constituencies have undergone a huge degree of change, with some being broken up and reallocated between three or four new seats. We’ll be looking at those which have been the most heavily redrawn, to see how these new boundaries impact election results.
- SNP/Labour battlegrounds: These are SNP-held seats where the incumbent has less than a 40% majority, and which Labour has held before. Labour is second in almost all these seats- if the party successfully makes inroads in Scotland, it should be most obvious here.
- Traditional swing seats: These constituencies and their predecessors have traditionally been bellwethers- if they swing from party to another, it’s a good indicator of the mood of the country overall. Keep an eye on these for a hint of who will be winning the most seats across the country on election night.
Data sources used in this project:Â
Data on new constituency boundaries and the closest predecessors of new seats is taken from the House of Commons Library.
Notional 2019 results are taken from the Guide to New Parliamentary Constituencies 2024 produced by the Elections Centre at the University of Essex.
Information on the electoral history of constituencies is taken from the House of Commons.
Data on the ethnic makeup, religious makeup, education level, age, housing tenure and rate of economic activity of parliamentary constituencies is take from the 2021 Census.
Indices of Multiple Deprivation scores for parliamentary constituencies are taken from the mySociety index.
2016 referendum results for new parliamentary constituencies are taken from predictions calculated by Professor Chris Hanretty.
MRP models referenced in this project include that produced by YouGov on the 19 June 2024, by More in Common on the 19 June 2024, by Savanta and Electoral Calculus on the 20 June 2024, and Focaldata on 24 June 2024.