LANCASHIRE · HYPOTHETICAL MAYORAL FORECAST · SUPPLEMENTARY VOTE
Mayor of Lancashire
Two methods, no blend
⚠ The methods disagree, and that disagreement is the finding. National polling and Lancashire's own recent local votes point at different winners. Read both; we do not average them.
GE2024 base + national swing
General election 2024 results across all fourteen Lancashire districts plus Blackburn with Darwen and Blackpool (16 constituencies apportioned by live postcode share), moved by the uniform national swing to the latest Westminster poll average (10 polls, fieldwork to 2026-08-05).
Central forecast, projected vote share
Most likely runoff: Labour v Reform UK (69% of runs), median final round Reform UK 50% · Labour 50%.
Lancashire local signal (unitaries model)
The county's own most recent local votes, taken from our Lancashire unitaries forecast: each proposed ward's LCC May 2025 division result nudged by the district's 2025 to 2026 borough and by-election swing, Blackburn's May 2026 wards directly, and a Blackpool proxy; electorate-weighted across the four proposed unitaries. Carries the local Reform organisation and independent vote the GE base misses. Not re-swung to current national polling, so it is a picture of votes actually cast in 2025 and 2026.
Central forecast, projected vote share
Most likely runoff: Labour v Reform UK (57% of runs), median final round Reform UK 57% · Labour 43%.
How second preferences are modelled, and why Lancashire gets its own parameters
Supplementary-vote counts never reveal transfers by source candidate, only the pooled totals, so any SV model estimates two things: how many eliminated-candidate ballots carry a usable second preference ("reach"), and how the transfers split between the finalists. This forecast calibrates both on three verified official counts, and gives Lancashire county-specific parameters: Lancashire-specific calibration, verified 8 Aug 2026: its own SV contests show higher transfer reach (0.583 in 2016, 0.656 in 2021) than the global anchors, and GM 2026 per-district second preferences show weaker left-bloc cohesion in Lancashire-like boroughs (Reform won transfers in Wigan, Oldham, Rochdale, Tameside, Bury). See sv_calibration entries lancashire_pcc_2016/2021 and gm_2026.
| Contest | Reach | Transfer split | What it teaches |
|---|---|---|---|
| Greater Manchester mayoral by-election, 30 Jul 2026 GMCA declaration | 60.8% | Labour 56.2 / Reform 43.8 | The only Reform-era SV contest. Its per-district table is the key evidence: Reform WON the second-preference battle in Wigan, Oldham, Rochdale, Tameside and Bury, the boroughs most like Lancashire; Labour's transfer strength came from Manchester, Stockport and Trafford. |
| Lancashire PCC, 2021 Lancashire OPCC | 65.6% | Lab 54.6 / Con 45.4 | Post-vaccine Conservative high point (Hartlepool day). Reform then a fringe 4.8% party. |
| Lancashire PCC, 2016 Wyre Council declared results | 58.3% | Con 52.0 / Lab 48.0 | UKIP-era right-populist ballots split almost evenly rather than consolidating right; 41.7% exhausted. |
The county's own SV history
- 2021: Snowden (Con) 51.27 to 48.73 over Grunshaw (Lab). First preferences: Con 44.8, Lab 41.6, LD 8.8, Reform UK 4.8. Pool 50,739; 33,279 reached the finalists (65.6%); split Lab 54.6 / Con 45.4.
- 2016: Grunshaw (Lab) beat Pratt (Con). First preferences: Lab 43.8, Con 32.0, UKIP 16.5, LD 7.7. Pool 73,151; 42,648 reached the finalists (58.3%); split Con 52.0 / Lab 48.0.
Where the mayoral vote lives
A mayoral election is one county-wide count, so the rows below are not separate contests: they show where each party's first-preference vote would come from, using the same ward-level model as our Lancashire unitaries forecast (votes actually cast in 2023-26, not re-swung to national polling).
| District | Electorate | Leads | Reform UK | Labour | Conservative | Lib Dem | Green Party |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Preston | 110,787 | Reform UK | 26.2% | 21.2% | 9.3% | 20.4% | 13.3% |
| Lancaster | 108,261 | Reform UK | 31.2% | 19.1% | 10.1% | 10.2% | 28.9% |
| Blackburn with Darwen | 107,912 | Reform UK | 30.3% | 22.7% | 10.4% | 0.3% | 12.0% |
| Blackpool | 103,508 | Labour | 27.9% | 32.1% | 20.1% | 2.5% | 3.1% |
| Chorley | 88,426 | Reform UK | 35.9% | 32.4% | 16.2% | 2.1% | 12.6% |
| South Ribble | 88,139 | Reform UK | 37.5% | 20.8% | 21.7% | 13.4% | 5.7% |
| West Lancashire | 87,522 | Reform UK | 33.2% | 18.7% | 15.8% | 3.4% | 10.6% |
| Wyre | 85,985 | Reform UK | 44.5% | 16.6% | 28.4% | 2.5% | 6.9% |
| Pendle | 67,950 | Reform UK | 29.7% | 8.1% | 19.0% | 15.3% | 7.2% |
| Burnley | 67,795 | Reform UK | 40.9% | 12.3% | 11.7% | 9.5% | 8.8% |
| Fylde | 65,057 | Conservative | 31.1% | 9.5% | 35.3% | 5.1% | 5.5% |
| Hyndburn | 60,104 | Reform UK | 40.8% | 21.6% | 23.1% | 0.0% | 12.2% |
| Rossendale | 51,565 | Reform UK | 42.6% | 23.5% | 18.3% | 0.9% | 14.1% |
| Ribble Valley | 49,858 | Reform UK | 37.3% | 14.4% | 20.6% | 8.7% | 8.1% |
Reform's ten strongest wards
- Fleetwood West & Cleveleys West (Wyre, 54.6%)
- Fleetwood East (Wyre, 53.6%)
- Ewood and Mill Hill & Moorgate (Blackburn with Darwen, 52.4%)
- Accrington North (Hyndburn, 52.4%)
- Blackburn South & Lower Darwen and Darwen East (Blackburn with Darwen, 51.0%)
- Rossendale East (Rossendale, 50.8%)
- Burnley South West (Burnley, 50.6%)
- Great Harwood, Rishton & Clayton Le Moors 1 (Rishton, Clayton-Le-Moors and Altham) (Hyndburn, 48.8%)
- Great Harwood, Rishton & Clayton Le Moors 2 (Netherton and Overton) (Hyndburn, 48.8%)
- Heysham (Lancaster, 48.2%)
Labour's ten strongest wards
- Chorley Rural East (Chorley, 45.8%)
- Bastwell & Daisyfield and Shear Brow & Corporation Park (Blackburn with Darwen, 43.8%)
- Park (Blackpool, 42.8%)
- Claremont and Talbot (Blackpool, 40.9%)
- Layton and Brunswick (Blackpool, 40.7%)
- Clifton and Marton (Blackpool, 39.9%)
- Blackburn Central and Wensley Fold (Blackburn with Darwen, 38.4%)
- Victoria and Hawes Side (Blackpool, 38.1%)
- Clayton with Whittle (Chorley, 37.5%)
- Chorley Central (Chorley, 35.3%)
Caveats
- Hypothetical: no election exists, no date, no candidates, no confirmed mayoral geography. The Lancashire Combined County Authority is non mayoral.
- The supplementary vote transfer calibration leans on the Greater Manchester by-election, a much more Labour leaning electorate than Lancashire. The transfer split is bloc symmetric (a Reform finalist gains eliminated Conservative second preferences at the same rate a Labour finalist gains Green and Liberal Democrat ones), but Restore Britain sits inside Other and is split 50/50, which likely understates Reform transfers in a Reform strong county. Treat Labour's runoff edge, where it appears, as an upper bound.
- Turnout for a standalone mayoral contest would be low and uneven; neither base fully captures that.
- District and ward figures are the local-votes method decomposed geographically; a real campaign, real candidates and turnout differences would move them.