Local council · Pendle
Whitefield & Walverden
1 seat contested on Thursday 7 May 2026. 7 candidates from 6 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 Whitefield & Walverden
✓ Winner called correctly
, predicted Independent,
actual Independent.
Major-party MAE: 2.51pp
across the parties below.
| Party | Predicted | Actual | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reform UK | 14.4% | 10.0% | +4.4pp |
| Labour | 14.4% | 15.3% | -0.9pp |
| Conservative | 7.7% | 7.4% | +0.3pp |
Positive gap = we predicted that party would win more share than they did. See the full Pendle accuracy summary or the national audit.
Recent contests
What happened last time
| Date | Type | Winner | Top share | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024-05-02 | Cycle | Independent | 64.8% | declaration |
| 2023-05-04 | Cycle | Labour Party | 66.8% | declaration |
| 2022-05-05 | Cycle | Labour Party | 56.7% | declaration |
| 2021-05-06 | Cycle | Labour Party | 22.7% | declaration |
Candidates 2026
Parties on the ballot
- Conservative and Unionist Party
- Green Party
- Independent
- Labour Party
- Lib Dem
- Reform UK
How this area looks demographically
Figures are for Pendle 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): 60.1% (Census 2021: 66.1%)
- Asian heritage (projected May 2026): 31.4% (Census 2021: 26.7%)
- Average area deprivation decile: 3.8 (1 = most deprived, 10 = least)
How this prediction was made
- Baseline . Most recent borough result (2024-05-02)
- BES MRP Prior . Baseline blended with BES Wave 1-30 north_west prior (weight 15%, n=3934 regional respondents)
- National Swing (STM) . Strong Transition Model: multiplicative bounded swing, dampened by 0.1 for local
- Demographics . 2 demographic factor(s) applied
- Incumbency . No current holder data available
- New Party Entry . Reform UK estimated at 31.0% from GE/LCC proxy + swing
- Normalise . All shares scaled to sum to 100%
- Restrict to ballot . Removed 3 party/parties not standing in 2026 (SNP 0.0pp, Other 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 (64.8%) — a hyperlocal personal-vote stronghold not represented in cross-tier county results. Otherwise blended toward May 2025 lancashire (82 divisions, 329,832 votes).
- Defection crystallisation . Labour collapsed 43.7pp from 2023 to 2024 with the share going to Asjad Mahmood. Continuation bonus +10.0pp applied to Independent on top of the 2024 baseline (the empirical defection pattern in Burnley / Bradford West / Birmingham Yardley etc. is monotonic decline, not a one-cycle protest).
- 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.