A statistician has the political parties almost neck and neck![\"Six](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/0_BRI_PG_030425weca_election-25.jpg\")
The candidates for West of England Metro Mayor (left to right): Arron Banks (Reform UK), Steve Smith (Conservative), Helen Godwin (Labour), Mary Page (Green), Oli Henman (Liberal Democrat), and Ian Scott (Independent)(Image: PAUL GILLIS \/ Reach PLC)<\/p>\n
The West of England mayoral election is a five-way marginal that could be one of the closest polling-day battles in British history, with the Greens set to claim a tight victory, an expert has predicted.<\/p>\n
Independent statistician Nigel Marriott, from Bath<\/a>, has crunched the numbers from voting patterns at previous local and national elections in the region and concluded that all five political parties\u2019 candidates have a chance of being the next metro mayor<\/a> from May.<\/p>\n But the Conservatives<\/a> are least likely to win, while the one independent is expected to trail a distant sixth.<\/p>\n His forecast, which is here<\/a>, has the Greens in the lead on 24 per cent of the vote, which would be an incredibly low figure to win an election, such is the even split.<\/p>\n Labour<\/a> and Reform are each predicted to receive 20 per cent, the Lib Dems<\/a> 19 per cent, the Tories 12 per cent and the independent taking five per cent.<\/p>\n Mr Marriott said: \u201cThis is shaping up to be one of the most unpredictable elections I\u2019ve ever seen.\u201d<\/p>\n Sign up to receive daily news updates and breaking news alerts straight to your inbox for free <\/strong>here<\/strong><\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n He has used four different statistical models, given each a weighting depending on how accurate he thinks they will be, and then calculated the weighted average for each party to give the overall percentages.<\/p>\n Two of the models actually have Labour in front, with the Greens and Reform on top in the other two.<\/p>\n Mr Marriott said: \u201cOn average, the Greens come first with 24 per cent but Labour, Lib Dems and Reform are all on or around 20 per cent which is nothing in the grand scheme of things.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat I will say is the Green and Lib Dem estimates are fairly stable across the four models unlike the Labour, Conservative and Reform parties which vary a lot between the models.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Conservatives are behind in all models but I am happy to call this a five-way marginal with the Greens most likely to win and Conservatives least likely.\u201d<\/p>\n The metro mayor<\/a> is the elected head of the West of England Combined Authority<\/a> (Weca), comprising Bristol, South Gloucestershire<\/a> and Bath & North East Somerset councils.<\/p>\n Mr Marriott said: \u201cI am forever struck by Weca\u2019s political diversity.\u201d<\/p>\n He said in the nine local, national and EU elections from 2010 to 2024, five different parties topped the polls \u2013 the Conservatives and Labour both finishing first on three occasions, with the Lib Dems, UKIP and the Greens receiving the most votes once.<\/p>\n The statistician made the most accurate prediction of the 2019 general election and also correctly forecast the Greens would win the most seats in last year\u2019s Bristol City Council<\/a> \u2019s local elections but fall short of a majority.<\/p>\n In 2021 he expected the Tories to retain the role of West of England mayor but the race was won by Labour\u2019s Dan Norris, who was arrested on suspicion of rape and child sex offences<\/a> earlier this month.<\/p>\n Mr Marriott said he now realised he made an error in his calculations for the Weca mayoral election four years ago and had adjusted his analysis.<\/p>\n Speaking of his 2025 prediction, he said: \u201cWhat could go wrong with such a forecast? A lot.\u201d<\/p>\n He said 12 per cent for the Conservatives was much more likely to be an underestimate than an overestimate because the collapse of the party\u2019s vote at last year\u2019s general election was driven in part by supporters staying at home, and a good local candidate could still get them out this year.<\/p>\n Mr Marriott said: \u201cPolls published in the last few days look like they are showing a bounce for the Lib Dems.<\/p>\n \u201cAt the moment, they are not included in my latest polls for 2025.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I update my forecast towards the end of April, this bounce, if sustained, will feed through and give the Lib Dems a boost.\u201d<\/p>\n He said polls showed the party\u2019s increase in support was at the expense of Labour, which could also suffer as a local reaction to Mr Norris\u2019s arrest<\/a>, so the forecast 20 per cent could turn out to be lower.<\/p>\n Mr Marriott said: \u201cReform is the hardest party to forecast.<\/p>\n \u201cThey didn\u2019t stand in 2021 and so have no obvious base to build on.<\/p>\n \u201cOn the other hand, they are polling comfortably at 25 per cent in the national polls and the local elections across England is a real opportunity to show they are now a political force.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019ve chosen a candidate with name recognition and depending how he campaigns, he must have a chance in a five-way marginal.<\/p>\n \u201cWhilst one of my models has them winning, my model did not predict Reform directly.<\/p>\n \u201cInstead, it predicted a combined Reform plus Independent and then split that total 80:20.<\/p>\n \u201cThat split is a pure finger in the air assumption and if the independent candidate does better than I expect, Reform won\u2019t be winning.<\/p>\n \u201cLastly, we come to the Greens who are the favourite according to my models at the moment.<\/p>\n \u201cUntil now, they have always been in opposition.<\/p>\n \u201cBut last year, they took minority control of Bristol City Council.<\/p>\n \u201cThat means Bristol voters have had a year of experiencing life under Green rule.<\/p>\n \u201cHas that made them more or less favourable?<\/p>\n \u201cI have no intelligence on the ground personally but I think as a general rule in these times, incumbent ruling parties find it hard to sustain support.<\/p>\n \u201cTherefore there is a risk my models are overestimating the Greens.\u201d<\/p>\n The six candidates<\/a> in the election on Thursday, May 1, are:<\/p>\n Try BristolLive Premium for FREE without intrusive ads and brilliant new features<\/p>\n No intrusive adverts, pop-ups or distractions! 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More info here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A statistician has the political parties almost neck and neckThe candidates for West of England Metro Mayor (left…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21996,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8818],"tags":[14141,14140,381,3893,748,527,393,1699,14139,4884,14144,528,11518,10751,14143,285,10299,10302,16,14138,15,14142],"class_list":{"0":"post-21995","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bristol","8":"tag-bath-and-north-east-somerset","9":"tag-bath-and-north-east-somerset-council","10":"tag-bristol","11":"tag-bristol-city-council","12":"tag-britain","13":"tag-conservative-party","14":"tag-england","15":"tag-european-union","16":"tag-general-election","17":"tag-great-britain","18":"tag-green-party","19":"tag-labour-party","20":"tag-liberal-democrats","21":"tag-local-elections","22":"tag-metro-mayor","23":"tag-politics","24":"tag-south-gloucestershire","25":"tag-south-gloucestershire-council","26":"tag-uk","27":"tag-uk-independence-party","28":"tag-united-kingdom","29":"tag-west-of-england-combined-authority"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114342038467290803","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21995"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21995\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/1744720930_438_consent-placeholder.svg.svg+xml\")
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