General election forecast
Watford
Predicted winner: Reform UK with 22.8% of the vote, a 0.4pp margin over Labour.
Predicted vote share
How the model expects this constituency to vote
Coloured number is the swing from the 2024 general election result.
Sitting MP
Matt Turmaine
- Party: Labour Party
- Tenure: 1.9 years (since 2024-07-04)
- Status: standing again
See also: TheyWorkForYou
2024 general election result
What happened on 4 July 2024
| Candidate | Party | Votes | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Matt Turmaine | Labour Party | 15,708 | 35.3% |
| Dean Russell | Conservative and Unionist Party | 10,985 | 24.7% |
| Ian Alexander Eric Stotesbury | Lib Dem | 7,577 | 17.0% |
| Gary Ling | Reform UK | 4,930 | 11.1% |
| Khalid Mahmood Chohan | Workers Party | 2,659 | 6.0% |
| Arran Bowen-la Grange | Green Party | 2,428 | 5.5% |
| Sarah Jane Knott | Heritage Party | 168 | 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 Watford, 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 Watford
- 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 east_of_england prior at weight 5%
- Normalise. Shares scaled to 100%