General Election: Will Bristol remain a Labor stronghold?

Labor could be on course for an almost clean sweep of Bristol, with a record number of seats in the west of England in its history – but with one or two other parties threatening to spoil the clean sweep.

Polling data suggests Labor will easily win four of the five seats it already holds in Bristol and could take four more from the Tories when the votes are counted on Friday morning.

But voters in two seats – Thornbury & Yate in South Gloucestershire and Bristol Central – could buck the trend and send a different party candidate to Westminster.

Read more: Conservatives facing extinction in West of England in latest YouGov poll

Read more: Former Tory MP for Kingswood to vote Labor in general election

Labor went into the 2024 general election campaign confident of keeping the seats it already holds in Bristol and picking up a few more in neighboring areas. And the latest MRP constituency polls show that Labor was right to be confident.

Predictions are that Labor could end up winning as many as eight out of ten seats in the West of England, but if pundits’ speculation of a Tory collapse is overblown and the “quiet Tories” come out in force. , it is more likely to be six or seven.

The latest YouGov seat-by-seat forecasts have Labor easily winning the safe Bristol seats it was always likely to hold.

Bristol South

Current predictions have Labor candidate Karin Smyth, who has been MP for South Bristol for nine years already, more than 40 percentage points ahead of second place, with the YouGov MRP poll putting her on 56 per cent – about halfway to 60 per cent . of the vote share it won in 2017 and the 50 percent it won in 2019.

The real race in Bristol South is for second place. YouGov is currently struggling to name so, with Reform UK on 14%, the Green Party on 13% and the Conservatives on 11%.

Bristol North West

Polls in Bristol North West – which has been a Labour-Conservative fringe for years and was held by the Tories as recently as 2017 – show a huge swing to Labour. In 2019, Labor MP Darren Jones won by ten percentage points and a majority of 5,692. Predictions for the 2024 elections have him ahead by 35 percentage points. He is on track to win 53% of the vote – not too different from the 49% he won in 2019.

Again, the contest for second place is closely contested. YouGov’s MRP poll has the Conservatives on 18 per cent, the Greens on 13 per cent and Reform UK on ten per cent.

Bristol East

Labor has long held Bristol East and the new boundary changes do not appear to impact that record, although the inclusion of inner-city areas such as Easton, Lawrence Hill and Barton Hill – where the Green Party won local council elections, could stimulate the green vote here.

The YouGov poll reflects that – they predict the Greens’ vote in Bristol East could be as high as 26 per cent, putting them easily second behind Labour’s Kerry McCarthy. In 2019, Ms McCarthy won 53 per cent of the vote, and the YouGov poll predicts not much change there – with Labor winning 54 per cent of the vote.

The Greens could go from losing their fourth place deposit in 2019 to being serious contenders for second place – YouGov have them on 26 per cent – well ahead of the Tories, Lib Dems and independent candidates.

Bristol North East

Bristol’s newest constituency – it’s basically half of what was Kingswood and half of Bristol East, with Lockleaze thrown in too. So previous results don’t apply here and it’s harder for YouGov to predict, but again the MRP poll has Labour’s Damien Egan on 54%, around 28 points ahead of his nearest competitor. Again, it’s a battle for second place between Reform Britain on 16 percent, the Conservatives on 14 percent and the Greens on 11 percent.

Bristol Central

This seat has been the focus of Labour’s efforts in the West of England – which in itself is remarkable given that it has been held by Labor with a huge majority since 2019. But the Green Party challenge will be one of the general stories in 2024. Elections if co-leader Carla Denyer can really make a huge difference and win it for the Greens to become only their second MP.

The YouGov poll has changed since the start of the year here, and now puts the Green Party 50-37 ahead of Labor in second place. The YouGov poll is only a projection from national polling information and local election results, but there was a constituency-specific poll conducted last week by Omnisis, commissioned by the Green Party. It had the Greens 49-40 ahead of Labour, although with a wider margin of error than most polls because only 500 people living in the constituency were asked and only 400 said they knew who they would vote for.

So if Thangam Debbonaire becomes Labour’s biggest casualty of the West Country general election, there could be many more Tory casualties in the area around Bristol on Friday morning.

Filton and Bradley Stoke

The suburban seat on the edge of South Gloucestershire in north Bristol will always be the Conservatives’ most vulnerable seat in a general election, and the latest YouGov poll has Labour’s Claire Hazelgrove winning it quite comfortably, even though Reform UK split the right vote. . The current forecast is for Labor to get 49 percent of the vote, the Conservatives 27 percent and UK Reform 14 percent.

North East Somerset and Hanham

West of England metro mayor Dan Norris has made a big gamble in his political career, and Labor has taken a gamble of sorts by electing a man who already has a big job to oppose Tory Jacob Rees-Mogg in a replay of the film. 2010 General Election Contest here. It could be the closest result of the night – YouGov has Labor on 41 per cent, just six points ahead of Rees Mogg on 35 per cent. UK Reform is 11 per cent and the Lib Dems are eight per cent. It’s certainly not a given that Labor will win here and Rees-Mogg will lose, so expect the result to be even tighter than Friday morning’s.

North Somerset

A long-standing Tory seat, the Tories held it literally forever – only when voters in what is now North Somerset agreed with Weston-super-Mare was a Liberal elected once, for a year more than a hundred. years ago.

So it would seem remarkable that a Tory collapse to less than 100 seats could include the loss of North Somerset, where Liam Fox was MP for 32 years. Labor is second but will need to overturn a majority of 17,536 people, with a swing of over 14%. The YouGov poll suggests this is possible – but only with strong UK reform that shows it is pulling back disgruntled Tory voters.

YouGov currently has Labor ten points ahead of the Conservatives by 40-30, with Reform UK on 16 points and the Lib Dem vote has collapsed to just nine per cent as people vote tactically.

Weston-super-Mare

Another seat that has been Tory for a generation, although it fell in the last great Labor landslide in 1997 – although it was held by the Lib Dems. This time, Labor has a mountain to climb to unseat John Penrose. He has a majority of 17,121 last time, but boundary changes have removed rural areas east of the M5, making Labour’s job a little easier.

YouGov again currently has Labor winning this 40-30 over the Tories, but again, like North Somerset, this depends on strong UK reform action. YouGov predicts 17% of Weston voters will go for Nigel Farage’s party.

Thornbury and Yate

Of all the constituencies in the West of England where a resurgent Labor Party has the least chance of winning, South Gloucestershire will not happen for Sir Keir Starmer. It has traditionally been a Tory-Lib Dem contest and the 2024 general election looks set to repeat that.

YouGov currently has a very close race with the Lib Dems on 37 per cent predicted and the Conservatives on 31 per cent, with Labor finishing fourth behind Reform UK.