General election forecast
Wakefield and Rothwell
Predicted winner: Labour with 30.8% of the vote, a 0.3pp margin over Reform UK.
Predicted vote share
How the model expects this constituency to vote
Coloured number is the swing from the 2024 general election result.
Sitting MP
Simon Lightwood
- Party: Labour and Co-operative Party
- Tenure: 2.1 years (since 2024-07-04)
- Status: standing again
See also: Labour Tracker MP page · TheyWorkForYou
2024 general election result
What happened on 4 July 2024
| Candidate | Party | Votes | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Simon Lightwood | Labour and Co-operative Party | 17,773 | 43.7% |
| David Alan Dews | Reform UK | 8,427 | 20.7% |
| Arnie Craven | Conservative and Unionist Party | 7,322 | 18.0% |
| Stewart Golton | Lib Dem | 3,249 | 8.0% |
| Ash Routh | Green Party | 2,389 | 5.9% |
| Keith Mason | Workers Party | 705 | 1.7% |
| Brent Hawksley | Yorkshire Party | 606 | 1.5% |
| Nicholas Sanders | Social Democratic Party | 185 | 0.5% |
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 Wakefield and Rothwell, and what actually happened.
Predicted
Actual on 4 July 2024
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
- GE2024 Baseline. Actual GE2024 result in Wakefield and Rothwell
- National Swing (Strong Transition Model). Multiplicative bounded swing, losers shed in proportion to local share, gainers absorb pro-rata national gain. Replaces additive UNS.
- BES MRP Prior. Baseline blended with BES Wave 1-30 yorkshire prior at weight 5%
- English-identity floor. English 31.2% → Reform +2.0pp
- Normalise. Shares scaled to 100%