General Election: Warrington South named as a top Tory target seat

It comes after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak called a General Election for July 4, during a statement delivered outside 10 Downing Street yesterday, Wednesday.

The election is being held using new constituency boundaries, which means the results cannot be compared directly with what happened at the last general election in 2019.

To measure how well the parties do at the election, and to determine which seats they need to win to form a government, a set of notional results for the 2019 election has been calculated to show what would have happened if that contest had taken place using the new boundaries.

These notional results have been compiled by Professor Colin Rallings and Professor Michael Thrasher, of the University of Plymouth, on behalf of the PA news agency, the BBC, ITN and Sky News.

The lists of target seats are based on the size of the swing needed to gain the seat based on the notional outcome in 2019.

The lists are ranked according to the size of the swing to gain, starting with the smallest, and with Warrington South as the main Tory target.

Current Warrington South MP, Conservative Andy Carter, won the constituency battle with Labour’s then-incumbent Faisal Rashid in 2019.

Mr Carter received 28,187 votes – a share of 45.5 per cent – while Mr Rashid received 26,177 votes and a share of 42.3 per cent.

However, since then, changes have taken place surrounding constituency boundaries, with Lymm moving from Warrington South to Tatton.

Alterations were made as part of a UK-wide redrawing of constituency boundaries carried out to reflect changes in the size of local populations.

The last time a major redrawing of boundaries took place was ahead of the 2010 General Election.

Statistical analysis suggests that, had these boundaries been in place in 2019, Labour would have won the seat by a 0.06 per cent share of the vote.

The top targets for this year’s 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 – hence why Warrington South is treated as a Labour defence, and why it has been named as the Tory party’s number one top target.

Conservative Mr Carter has previously announced that he will not be standing for re-election in Warrington South, with no candidate yet announced, while Labour's candidate will be former Warrington borough councillor Sarah Hall.

On these parameters, the north west is set to play a crucial role in determining the outcome of the General Election.

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

It contains five of Labour’s top 10 targets and three of the Tories’ top 10.

Labour needs a swing of only 0.13 percentage points 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 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 and Atherton, High Peak in Derbyshire, Bangor Aberconwy in Wales, Wolverhampton West, and Bury South.

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

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