Where the General Election will be won and lost

As voters set out to cast their ballots on July 4, Tories and Labour are set to go head to head in key battlegrounds.

North-west England is set to be a focal point – containing five of Labour’s top 10 targets and three of the Tories’ top 10.

The region is home to the number one target seat for Labour – Burnley – and the chief target for the Conservatives: Warrington South.

Other key Conservative-Labour battlegrounds include the Midlands and Yorkshire, while most of the pivotal Conservative-Liberal Democrat contests are in southern England.

Scotland and Wales hold opportunities for several parties to make gains, but East Anglia could find itself largely overlooked during the campaign, with very few constituencies appearing on any battleground lists.

Metro.co.uk has compiled a map of the locations most likely to swing the election this year.

The top targets for the General Election are based on how easy or hard it would be for a seat to change hands.

This is done by calculating the change in the share of the vote in each seat, or swing, that would be needed for a party to make a gain – the smaller the swing, the higher the seat is ranked on the list.

Labour needs a swing of only 0.13 percentage points, or 0.2 if written to one decimal place (as 0.1 would not be enough), to gain Burnley from the Conservatives.

The Tories would take Warrington South – which at the next election will be treated as a Labour defence because of boundary changes – on an even smaller swing of 0.06 (or 0.1) points.

Five other seats in Labour’s top 10 would fall to the party on a swing of 1.0 points or less, all of which are being defended by the Conservatives: Leigh & Atherton in Greater Manchester, High Peak in Derbyshire, Bangor Aberconwy in Wales, Wolverhampton West in the West Midlands and Bury South in Greater Manchester.

Bury North and Bolton North East in Greater Manchester, Watford in Hertfordshire and Chingford & Woodford Green in north London complete Labour’s top 10 – all Tory defences.

Key Labour and Conservative battlegrounds

The data shows that, of Labour’s top 50 targets, 10 are in north-west England, seven in Wales, six in the East Midlands and five each in the West Midlands and Yorkshire/Humber, with the remainder spread across the rest of the UK.

All of these will be treated as Conservative defences at the election – and all would fall on local swings from Tory to Labour of up to 5.4 percentage points.

Labour would need to perform much better to stand any chance of forming the next government, however.

The party needs a uniform nationwide swing from Conservative to Labour of 8.3 points to become the largest party in a hung parliament, and an even bigger swing of 12.7 points to gain an overall majority – more than the 10.2-point swing achieved by Tony Blair in 1997.

Two key constituencies to watch for Labour will be Chelsea & Fulham in London and Buckingham & Bletchley in Buckinghamshire.

Of the Conservatives’ top 50 targets, 11 are in Yorkshire/Humber, seven in north-west England and five each in the West Midlands and Wales – all areas that appear high on Labour’s list.

North-east England only two of Labour’s top 50 but nine of the Tories’ top 50 – all of which are being defended by Labour.

Along with Warrington South, the Conservatives’ top 10 are all Labour defences and include two other seats in the North West: Wirral West in Merseyside and Heywood & Middleton North in Greater Manchester.

In the West Midlands, Coventry North West, Coventry South and Warwick & Leamington are Labour defences.

Others are Alyn & Deeside in Wales; and three are in London: Kensington & Bayswater, Beckenham & Penge and Dagenham & Rainham.

Boundary changes – what do they mean?

Leigh & Atherton, Bangor Aberconwy and Wolverhampton West are all examples of new seats at the General Election, part of an effort to redraw constituency boundaries carried out to reflect changes in the size of local populations.

This is also why Bury South will be treated as a Conservative defence at the next election, even though its present MP, Christian Wakeford, defected from the Tories to Labour halfway through the current parliament.

The last time a major redrawing of boundaries took place was ahead of the 2010 general election.

To identify which seats on the new electoral map will be the parties’ top targets, Professor Colin Rallings and Professor Michael Thrasher of the University of Plymouth compiled results.

For example, Burnley, Labour’s number one target, had a notional result in 2019 of the Tories on 40.46% of the vote and Labour on 40.19%, while Warrington South, the Tories’ top target, was 44.47% Labour and 44.35% Conservative.

This is why Warrington South will be treated as a Labour defence at the next election – and is considered the Conservatives’ top target – despite it being currently represented by Tory MP Andy Carter.

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