Local council · Huntingdonshire
St Ives West
1 seat contested on Thursday 7 May 2026. 5 candidates from 5 parties.
Neighbours shaded by Reform UK share vs this ward, red = higher, blue = lower.
Predicted vote share
What the model expects
Predictions are point estimates: the model's best guess, not a guarantee. The "How this prediction was made" section below lists every step that shaped this forecast.
How accurate was the model here?
Our 7 May 2026 forecast for St Ives West
| Party | Predicted | Actual | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reform UK | 25.5% | 20.5% | +5.0pp |
| Conservative | 26.4% | 12.2% | +14.3pp |
Positive gap = we predicted that party would win more share than they did. See the full Huntingdonshire accuracy summary or the national audit.
Recent contests
What happened last time
| Date | Type | Winner | Top share | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022-05-05 | Cycle | Independent | 46.6% | declaration |
| 2018-05-03 | Cycle | Conservative and Unionist Party | 58.0% | declaration |
| 2016-05-05 | Cycle | Conservative and Unionist Party | 47.0% | declaration |
Candidates 2026
Parties on the ballot
- Conservative and Unionist Party
- Green Party
- Independent
- Lib Dem
- Reform UK
How this area looks demographically
Figures are for Huntingdonshire as a whole. The same local-authority figures are used for every ward in the council, finer ward-level demographics will land in a future release.
- White British (projected May 2026): 83.3% (Census 2021: 85.2%)
- Asian heritage (projected May 2026): 3.4% (Census 2021: 3.2%)
- Average area deprivation decile: 7.4 (1 = most deprived, 10 = least)
How this prediction was made
- Baseline . Most recent borough result (2022-05-05)
- BES MRP Prior . Baseline blended with BES Wave 1-30 east_of_england prior (weight 15%, n=3761 regional respondents)
- National Swing (STM) . Strong Transition Model: multiplicative bounded swing, dampened by 0.1 for local
- Demographics . 1 demographic factor(s) applied
- Incumbency . No current holder data available
- New Party Entry . Reform UK estimated at 21.2% from GE/LCC proxy + swing
- Normalise . All shares scaled to sum to 100%
- Restrict to ballot . Removed 4 party/parties not standing in 2026 (Labour 3.9pp, Other 0.0pp, SNP 0.0pp, Plaid Cymru 0.0pp). Their share redistributed pro-rata.
- 2025 county-cycle anchor . Anchor weight reduced to 0.10 because Independent won the latest borough cycle (46.6%) — a hyperlocal personal-vote stronghold not represented in cross-tier county results. Otherwise blended toward May 2025 cambridgeshire (59 divisions, 185,747 votes).
- National-share calibration . Aggregate-predicted vs national-polled mismatch corrected at strength 0.65. Multipliers — Labour ×0.82, Conservative ×1.00, Reform UK ×1.15, Liberal Democrats ×0.96, Green Party ×1.12, SNP ×1.00, Plaid Cymru ×1.00.