Local council · West Lancashire
Rural South
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 Rural South
| Party | Predicted | Actual | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reform UK | 40.2% | 28.0% | +12.2pp |
| Labour | 21.9% | 12.5% | +9.4pp |
| Conservative | 19.3% | 7.4% | +11.9pp |
Positive gap = we predicted that party would win more share than they did. See the full West Lancashire accuracy summary or the national audit.
Recent contests
What happened last time
| Date | Type | Winner | Top share | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024-05-02 | Cycle | Our West Lancashire | 48.2% | declaration |
| 2023-06-22 | Cycle | Our West Lancashire | 16.8% | declaration |
Candidates 2026
Parties on the ballot
- Conservative and Unionist Party
- Green Party
- Labour Party
- Our West Lancashire
- Reform UK
How this area looks demographically
Figures are for West Lancashire 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): 91.5% (Census 2021: 92.8%)
- Asian heritage (projected May 2026): 1.1% (Census 2021: 1.0%)
- Average area deprivation decile: 6.2 (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 21.9% from GE/LCC proxy + swing
- Normalise . All shares scaled to sum to 100%
- Restrict to ballot . Removed 5 party/parties not standing in 2026 (Independent 33.9pp, Liberal Democrats 1.4pp, 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 Our West Lancashire won the latest borough cycle (48.2%) — a hyperlocal personal-vote stronghold not represented in cross-tier county results. Otherwise blended toward May 2025 lancashire (82 divisions, 329,832 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.