General election forecast

Edinburgh South West

Predicted winner: SNP with 26.5% of the vote, a 0.5pp margin over Labour.

scotland · scotland

Predicted vote share

How the model expects this constituency to vote

SNP
26.5% +26.5pp
Labour
26.0% +26.0pp
Reform UK
16.1% +11.5pp
Green Party
13.0% +13.0pp
Conservative
9.9% +9.9pp
Lib Dem
7.3% +0.7pp
Scottish Family Party
0.6% +0.0pp
Independent
0.4% +0.0pp
Plaid Cymru
0.3% +0.3pp
Other
0.0% 0.0pp

Coloured number is the swing from the 2024 general election result.

Sitting MP

Scott Arthur

See also: TheyWorkForYou

2024 general election result

What happened on 4 July 2024

CandidatePartyVotesShare
Scott Arthur Labour Party 18,663 40.9%
Joanna Cherry Scottish National Party (SNP) 12,446 27.3%
Sue Webber Conservative and Unionist Party 5,558 12.2%
Dan Heap Scottish Green Party 3,450 7.6%
Bruce Wilson Lib Dem 3,014 6.6%
Ian Harper Reform UK 2,087 4.6%
Richard Crewe Lucas Scottish Family Party 265 0.6%
Marc Richard Wilkinson Independent 181 0.4%

Source: Returning officer declaration

How accurate is the model here?

Our 2024 backtest for this constituency

We replayed the same model architecture against the 4 July 2024 general election using only the data a forecaster running the model in May 2024 would have known. Here's what it would have predicted for Edinburgh South West, and what actually happened.

✗ Winner missed , predicted SNP, actual Labour. Major-party MAE: 10.26pp, the average gap between our predicted vote share and the actual share, per major party.

Predicted

Labour
15.5%
SNP
39.2%
Conservative
6.4%
Scottish Green Party
3.3%
Lib Dem
9.8%
Reform UK
16.6%
Scottish Family Party
0.0%
Independent
1.9%
Green Party
4.9%
Workers Party
0.9%

Actual on 4 July 2024

Labour
40.9% -25.4pp
SNP
27.3% +11.9pp
Conservative
12.2% -5.7pp
Scottish Green Party
7.6% -4.2pp
Lib Dem
6.6% +3.2pp
Reform UK
4.6% +12.1pp
Scottish Family Party
0.6% -0.6pp
Independent
0.4% +1.5pp
Green Party
0.0% +4.9pp
Workers Party
0.0% +0.9pp

Positive gap = we predicted that party would win more share than they did. See the full GE backtest across all 650 seats for the model's national accuracy.

How this forecast was built
  1. GE2024 Baseline. Actual GE2024 result in Edinburgh South West
  2. National Swing (Strong Transition Model). Multiplicative bounded swing, losers shed in proportion to local share, gainers absorb pro-rata national gain. Replaces additive UNS.
  3. BES MRP Prior. Baseline blended with BES Wave 1-30 scotland prior at weight 5%
  4. Normalise. Shares scaled to 100%

Read the full general election methodology →