Our first MRP of Andy Burnham’s premiership finds Labour would be the largest party in an election tomorrow.

Key findings:

• Labour would be the largest party in a hung parliament with 250 seats, 76 short of a majority. Reform UK would win 147 seats, the Conservatives 125 and the Liberal Democrats 63. If Labour led the government following this election, it would be the smallest number of seats for a main government party for over a century, since 1924.

• This is a dramatic shift from More in Common’s July MRP, when Reform UK was projected to win 293 seats and Labour just 110. Since July, 214 seat projections have changed, 143 of them to Labour. However Labour would still be 161 seats down from their July 2024 result.

• Labour and the Liberal Democrats together would be within touching distance of a majority. They would hold 313 seats, 13 short of a majority. Labour may need the support of at least one other party to govern.

• Extremely marginal race: Nearly half of all seats (48 per cent) would be won by fewer than five points. Reform UK’s seats are the most marginal: 69 per cent of them are won by fewer than five points.

• Labour’s lead is highly precarious: a two-point swing from Labour to Reform UK would make Reform the largest party. A three-point swing the other way would give Labour a majority.

• Tactical voting could hand Labour an extra 25 seats in England, and the Conservatives could move into second place. Most of these gains come at Reform UK’s expense. That would take Labour to 275 seats, still short of a majority.

• Labour’s support has become far less London-centric. In July, 44 per cent of Labour’s projected seats were in London; that is now 21 per cent as Labour makes dramatic gains in the North East, North West and Wales.

• The Conservative’s recovery continues, and they would now win fractionally more seats than in 2024. In this model, the party wins 29 more seats than in July, with only a small change in their vote share. 

• Restore Britain wins only Great Yarmouth, but still affects the result. In 76 seats, Reform UK finishes second by less than Restore Britain’s vote share, suggesting Rupert Lowe’s party could split the right and cost Reform dozens of seats.

• The SNP remains the largest party in Scotland, but Labour is recovering. The SNP would win 27 of Scotland’s 57 seats, down from 37 in July, while Labour would win 18, up from five, taking 14 seats from the SNP. 

• Reform UK has slumped in Wales, while Labour comes back from extinction. In July, Reform UK was projected to win 21 of Wales’ 32 seats and Labour none. Reform now wins just six, while Labour wins 17 and is once again the largest party in Wales. Since July, Labour’s vote share in Wales is up seven points and Reform UK’s is down six.

More in Common’s latest MRP projection finds that the electoral map has changed dramatically since Andy Burnham became Prime Minister.

If a general election were held tomorrow, Labour are projected to be the largest party in a hung parliament, winning 250 seats – 76 short of the 326 needed for a majority. Reform UK would come second with 147 seats, followed by the Conservatives on 125, the Liberal Democrats on 63 and the Scottish National Party (SNP) on 27. Plaid Cymru would win six seats, the Green Party three and Restore Britain one, with nine seats going to other candidates.

This marks a significant shift since More in Common’s July MRP, which projected Reform UK as the largest party. Between the two projections, 214 seats have changed hands, 143 of them to Labour.

No single party comes close to a majority, although Labour and the Liberal Democrats coalition come within touching distance. Together, they would hold 313 seats, 13 short of a majority, meaning Labour could need the support of at least one further party. Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the SNP together would reach 340 seats. Without the SNP, Labour, the Liberal Democrats, the Greens and Plaid Cymru combined would hold 322. On the right, Reform UK and the Conservatives together would hold 272 seats, 54 short of a majority. If Labour led the government following this election, it would be the smallest number of seats held by the main governing party for over a century. The last time a party governed with fewer was Ramsay MacDonald’s first Labour government in January 1924, which had 191 seats.

In terms of vote share, Labour is projected to win 26 per cent of the vote, Reform UK 24 per cent, the Conservatives 22 per cent, the Liberal Democrats 11 per cent, the Greens 8 per cent and Restore Britain 3 per cent. Compared with July, Labour is up five points and Reform UK is down three.

Nearly half of all seats are on a knife edge

The projected parliament is extremely marginal. Of the 631 seats contested by the parties, 302 (48 per cent) would be won by a margin of fewer than five points, 137 by fewer than two points, and 82 by less than a single point. The average winning margin across all seats is 7.8 points, less than half the 16.2 point average at the 2024 general election.

Reform UK’s seats are the most marginal of any party. 102 of the 147 seats Reform UK is projected to win (69 per cent) are won by fewer than five points, and all but seven are won by fewer than ten. Reform’s average winning margin is just 3.8 points. The Conservatives are similarly exposed, with 80 of their 125 seats (64 per cent) won by fewer than five points and an average margin of 4.4 points. By contrast, around a third of Labour’s seats (80 of 250)  and the Liberal Democrats’ seats (20 of 63) are won by fewer than five points.

The Battle for the Right is particularly competitive. The Conservatives are in second place in 63 of Reform’s 102 marginal seats, while Reform UK is second in 49 of the Conservatives’ 80 marginal seats. Reform UK is second place and within five points of the winner in 106 seats it does not win – 49 held by the Conservatives and 47 held by Labour.

This means relatively small changes in Reform UK’s support could have a large effect on the final result. Applying a uniform national swing (UNS) to the projection, a two-point swing from Labour to Reform UK would be enough to make Reform the largest party, while a five-point swing would give Reform a majority. A three-point swing in the other direction would give Labour a majority.

Tactical voting could help give Labour 25 seats – and move the Conservatives into second place

Alongside the headline projection, More in Common has estimated how tactical voting could change the result. This is based on separate polling on which groups of voters are most willing to vote tactically, and which parties they are most motivated to keep out. This scenario assumes that voters only switch in seats where their preferred party is more than ten points behind second place. We can only model this in England, because we do not have Scotland and Wales specific dynamics about uinionist and nationalist tactical voting.

Under this scenario, 48 seats would change hands. Labour would gain an extra 25 seats, taking it to 275- still 51 short of a majority, but now able to coalition just with the Liberal Democrats. Most of the change comes at Reform UK’s expense: Reform would fall by 30 seats to 117. The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats would also see marginal gains of seven and two seats each, taking them to 132 and 65 respectively. 

Burnham has begun to change Labour’s fortunes

At the end of Keir Starmer’s premiership, Labour was projected to win just 110 seats, down 301 on its 2024 result and the worst single loss of seats for the party in its history. Reform UK was projected to be within touching distance of a majority at 293.

Labour’s fortunes have dramatically improved, despite a fairly modest five-point increase in vote share. Labour wins 140 more seats in this model than in More in Common’s July MRP. It wins back 101 seats from Reform UK, 14 from the SNP and 13 from the Conservatives, as well as eight from the Greens and four from Plaid Cymru.

This would leave Labour on 250 seats, still 161 fewer than it won in 2024. Compared with the 2024 General Election, Labour loses 95 seats to Reform UK, 42 to the Conservatives and 19 to the SNP, and one to the Greens. A coalition with the Liberal Democrats alone would not be enough to reach a majority in the House of Commons.

Labour’s support is becoming more regionally diverse, and less London-centric. In the final days of Keir Starmer’s government, Labour risked becoming the party of London: in More in Common’s July MRP, 44 per cent of the seats Labour was projected to win were in London. In this projection, that falls to 21 per cent.

The seats Labour is winning back are disproportionately concentrated in the North West (33), Wales (17) and the North East (14). Many of these seats are in post-industrial areas where Labour suffered heavy losses in the May local elections. These are also the regions where Labour’s vote share has risen most since July – by nine points in the North East, eight in Wales and seven in the North West. In Wales, where Labour was projected to win no seats in July, it now wins 17 of 32. In Scotland, Labour wins 18 seats, up from five in July but still well below the 37 it won in 2024.

Some senior Labour figures would risk losing their seats – including the Chancellor. Andy Burnham is projected to hold Makerfield comfortably, 14 points ahead of Reform UK, and Angela Rayner to hold Ashton-under-Lyne by eight points. Bridget Phillipson and Ed Miliband’s seats (Houghton and Sunderland South and Doncaster North) are projected to be Labour-Reform marginals – Phillipson retaining her seat by just less than a percentage point, and Miliband losing his by just one point. Yvette Cooper (Pontefract, Castleford and Knottingley) and John Healey (Rawmarsh and Conisbrough) are both projected to lose their seats to Reform. Wes Streeting could lose Ilford North to an independent candidate, but by a margin of less than two percentage points. Yvette Cooper is projected to lose her seat (Pontefract, Castleford and Knottingley) by seven points to Reform UK.

Reform falls back from their peak

Reform UK is projected to win 147 seats, a decline of 146 since More in Common’s MRP this July, though still 142 more than the five it won in 2024. 

This is the third consecutive MRP where More in Common has found Reform’s projected seat count declining. A year ago, in September 2025, they were projected to win a comfortable majority with 373 seats. Since January 2026, they have declined, from 381 seats to 324 in April, 293 in July and 147 today.

Of the 293 seats Reform UK was projected to win in July, it loses 101 to Labour, 43 to the Conservatives, four to the Liberal Democrats, three to the SNP and two to Plaid Cymru. It gains six seats from the Conservatives. Reform’s decline is steepest in the North East, where its vote share is down eight points, and in Wales, where it is down seven points and where the party falls from 21 seats in July to just six today.

Compared with 2024, Reform UK gains 95 seats from Labour, 46 from the Conservatives and two from the Liberal Democrats. Its support remains strongest in areas with fewer university graduates. Its strongest seats are Blackpool South (41 per cent), Clacton, Castle Point and Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes (39 per cent each).

Nigel Farage would hold Clacton by 12.5 points over the Conservatives, but other senior Reform seats are competitive. Lee Anderson would hold Ashfield by 3.5 points over Labour, and Richard Tice would hold Boston and Skegness by just 1.5 points over the Conservatives.

Conservative-Reform defectors have mixed outcomes: Suella Braverman is projected to win Fareham and Waterlooville for Reform, as does Andrew Rosindell in Romford. But both Robert Jenrick (Newark) and Danny Kruger (East Wiltshire) are projected to lose their seats to the Conservatives.

But a Reform resurgence is still on the cards: the party is in second place in 228 seats, more than any other party. But with 69 per cent of its seats won by fewer than five points, Reform’s seat total is also the most exposed to small changes in support.

Conservative recovery in sight

The Conservatives are projected to win 125 seats, up 29 from More in Common’s July MRP and four more than they won in 2024. Their vote share is broadly unchanged since July, at 22 per cent, meaning much of the party’s gains come from Reform UK falling back in seats where the two are competing.

This is the fourth consecutive More in Common model where the Conservatives are projected to increase their number of seats – from a low point of 41 seats in September 2025, they have tripled their projected wins.

Since July, the Conservatives are projected to gain 43 seats from Reform UK, five from the Liberal Democrats and one from the SNP, while losing 13 to Labour and six to Reform. Compared with 2024, they gain 42 seats from Labour, five from the Liberal Democrats, two from the Greens and one from the SNP, but lose 46 to Reform UK.

The Conservative recovery remains fragile. 64 per cent of the party’s seats are won by fewer than five points, and Reform UK is in second place in 76 of the 125 seats the Conservatives win. 

Kemi Badenoch would hold North West Essex by around three points over Reform UK, while James Cleverly (Braintree) and Priti Patel (Witham) would both lose their seats to Reform by less than two points.

Just 1 in 96 Reform voters would need to change their minds for Conservatives to become official opposition. A small change in the battle for the right could also drastically change the picture. A 1% swing from Reform to the Conservatives would leave the Conservatives as the clear opposition party at 167 to Reform’s 101. But a 1% swing back to Reform would leave Reform almost twice as large, at 181 to 89. A 3% swing against either of these parties would leave both under 50 seats (47 for Reform, 39 for the Conservatives).

The ‘Green surge’ ebbs

The Green Party is projected to win three seats – Brighton Pavilion, Bristol Central, and Gorton and Denton – down by seven from More in Common’s July MRP and one less than in 2024. The party loses its 2024 rural gains of Waveney Valley and North Herefordshire back to the Conservatives. Hannah Spencer is narrowly projected to win Gorton and Denton by 0.5 percentage points.

Labour’s gains in vote share have come heavily at the Greens’ expense. In most constituencies where Labour’s vote share has risen since July, the Green vote share has fallen. The Greens are now in second place in 40 of the seats Labour wins.

The Liberal Democrats could be kingmakers

The Liberal Democrats are projected to win 63 seats, three fewer than in July and nine fewer than in 2024, on 11 per cent of the vote. Compared with 2024, they lose five seats to the Conservatives (Maidenhead, Melksham and Devizes, Mid Dorset and North Poole, North East Hampshire, and Thornbury and Yate), two to Reform UK (Newton Abbot and Torbay) and two to Labour (Hazel Grove and Mid Dunbartonshire).

The Liberal Democrats’ key battleground is with the Conservatives. The Conservatives are second in 43 of the 63 seats the Liberal Democrats win, and in 16 of its 20 most marginal seats.

With Labour 76 seats short of a majority, the Liberal Democrats would be the largest potential partner in any Labour-led government, though together the two parties would still fall 13 seats short.

Restore Britain splits the right

This is the first More in Common MRP to include Restore Britain as a prompted option. The party is projected to win 3 per cent of the vote nationally, and only one seat, Rupert Lowe’s Great Yarmouth. 

Even without winning seats, Restore Britain has an effect on the result. In 76 seats where Reform UK finishes second, the gap between Reform and the winning party is smaller than Restore Britain’s vote share. Labour wins 38 of these seats, the Conservatives 27, the SNP eight and the Liberal Democrats three. Of the seats Reform UK was projected to win in July but no longer wins, 54 are seats where it finishes second by a margin smaller than Restore Britain’s vote share.

Not every Restore Britain voter would back Reform UK if Restore were not standing, so these figures show the maximum number of seats where the split on the right could be costing Reform, rather than seats it would definitely win.

SNP leads in Scotland, but Labour are clawing back from their nadir

The SNP holds on as the largest party in Scotland. It is projected to win 27 of Scotland’s 57 seats, three times the nine it won in 2024. But this is down from the 37 seats More in Common’s July MRP projected for the party. 

The SNP’s drop since July is driven by Labour’s recovery. The SNP’s vote share only dropped by less than two points. Instead, its losses are driven by Labour winning back support in Scotland. Labour’s vote share in Scotland has risen five points since July, and it takes 14 seats from the SNP, winning 18 in total. That remains only half of the 37 seats Labour won in 2024, but a substantial recovery from the five it was projected to win in July. Reform UK has fallen back in Scotland too, with its vote share down five points and its seat count down from six to one. The Conservatives win six seats, up from three in July and one more than in 2024. They take back three seats in the North East and South of Scotland that Reform UK was projected to win in July.

Reform support slumps in Wales as Labour comes back from the brink

In Wales, Reform UK’s support has collapsed and Labour has come back from the brink. In July, More in Common’s MRP projected Reform UK to win 21 of Wales’ 32 seats, with Labour winning none. Reform now wins just six seats in Wales.

Labour has been the main beneficiary of this drop. Its vote share in Wales is up seven points since July, and it now wins 17 seats – taking 13 from Reform UK and four from Plaid Cymru. That remains below the 27 seats Labour won in 2024, but makes it the largest party in Wales once again. 

Plaid Cymru gains two seats since the 2024 General Election, but has fallen from nine seats to six since July – mostly driven by Labour making gains at their expense in South Wales.

Labour’s recovery is concentrated in its traditional heartlands. Around half of the seats it wins are in the south Wales Valleys, including the four Valleys seats that Plaid Cymru was projected to win in July. Most of the rest are in Cardiff and Swansea, with four in north Wales.

Luke Tryl, UK Director at More in Common, said: “On the eve of last year’s Labour Party Conference, our MRP projected Reform could get close to a three figure majority, while both Labour and the Conservatives dropped to below triple figures.

Fast forward to today, and it is clear the electoral landscape has transformed dramatically with Andy Burnham as Prime Minister. Our MRP suggests now that Labour would clearly emerge as the largest party on 250 seats, with Reform UK a distant second on 147 – less than half what they were projected to win this time last year. The Conservatives meanwhile, while still far from being a realistic prospect for Government, have once again made the Battle of the Right competitive, and are only 22 seats behind Reform – whereas they were trailing by 332 seats this time last year

But far from representing a return to politics as normal, volatility has become the new watch word of our electoral system. The model projects that almost half of the seats would be won on margins of less than 5 per cent, meaning small swings in either direction could see any of the Tories, Reform or Labour ending up on top. And while the Labour advantage in seats is comfortable even on these numbers, they would still be forced into a multi-party coalition or arrangement to maintain power.

But the other clear message of these numbers is that tactical voting, of the sort we have already seen play out in by-elections, could have an outsized impact on the numbers – giving a Lib-Lab coalition the numbers for a majority and allowing the Tories to leapfrog Reform. If Reform is to recover to the levels of support it enjoyed last year it needs to find a way not only to build support but also to dampen the level of opposition from its opponents.

As for an Early General Election? On this projection, Burnham’s decision to rule out an early election is a sensible one – while Labour is off its death bed, the party’s recovery is far from complete. To call a poll the Prime Minister would have had to be willing to risk the careers of scores of his colleagues including his Chancellor and Foreign Secretary, while even small shifts in the current numbers would have left him vulnerable to having a stint in Downing Street only longer than that of Liz Truss.”

Methodology

Sample size: 15,765 GB adults

Fieldwork dates: 21 August – 21 September 2026

FAQs

What is an MRP?

‘Multilevel Regression with Post-stratification’ (MRP) uses data from a voting intention poll to model how people will vote based on their demographics, voting behaviour and information about their constituency. These results are then applied to the demographic and electoral makeup of each constituency to make a constituency-level estimate. The model is ‘multilevel’ because it uses both individual and constituency-level data.

How is this different from your normal voting intention poll?

The voting intention regularly published by More in Common is a national estimate based on a representative sample of at least 2,000 people. It indicates roughly how many people in Great Britain intend to vote for one party or another. This is simple to calculate and allows us to track changes through time.

But if you want to estimate a national seat count, this isn’t as useful. No political party performs equally well in every seat, because their supporters are not evenly spread across the country. For example, a 70-year-old man who didn’t go to university and lives in a small village has a higher likelihood of voting Conservative than a 25-year-old woman renting a flat in a major city.

The benefit of MRP is the ability to use information about the different people who live in every constituency across the country to estimate how many people will vote for each party.

How does the model account for those who don’t know how they will vote?

When we ask people their voting intention, some people say they don’t know. We push them to say who they would vote for if they were forced to choose, and we use this response as their expected vote. Some people, when asked to imagine that they were forced to choose, still don’t know who they would vote for. Using our MRP model, we’re able to make a better guess at how these “double don’t knows” might end up voting. When training the model to predict people’s voting intention based on their demographics, voting behaviour and information about their constituency, we excluded the responses of people who didn’t know who they would vote for (after the squeeze) from the training data. When we apply the model to all the voters in the constituency, it effectively means we estimate the votes of people who don’t know, according to how people like them (in terms of demographics and past voting behaviour) but who do know, intend to vote. So if someone lives in a rural area, is over 75 and voted Conservative in 2024, the model uses the fact that most over 75s in rural areas who voted Conservative in 2024 and do know who they’ll vote for say they will vote Conservative, to guess that if they do vote it will likely be for the Conservatives.

Is this a snapshot or a projection?

With three and a half years before the next General Election must be called this model is unlikely to represent anything close to the ultimate result and should not be seen as a projection of the election.

As well as not knowing what might happen between now and 2029, we also don’t know which parties will stand in different seats, what tactical voting might look like exactly and who will ultimately turn out to vote. What’s more, the degree of electoral fragmentation makes individual seat dynamics even more difficult to project than previously.

Instead this model provides a baseline for how the electorate has fragmented since the last General Election and what the implications of that might be for the make up of a future Parliament. We will continue to update it throughout the next Parliament and introduce new data as it becomes available.

Why does the model show X party winning in Y constituency?

MRP models are a good way to estimate how the parties might perform across different constituencies based on their demographic makeup. However, they don’t account for local factors that impact a small number of constituencies, such as a popular incumbent, well known or controversial council policy. These factors make it difficult to predict exact vote shares even in the best of times, but even more so when three parties are polling at over 20%, making three-way races more common. Therefore it would be a mistake to draw too much from the estimated vote share in an individual constituency.