My projection for the next Westminster general election. Labour and Reform finish on exactly the same vote share — 23.0% each — and Labour takes 220 seats to Reform's 177. Nobody comes close to 326.
| Party | Votes | Seats | vs 2024 | Share of Commons |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Labour | 23.0% | 220 | −192 | 33.8% |
| Reform UK | 23.0% | 177 | +172 | 27.2% |
| Conservative | 20.0% | 108 | −13 | 16.6% |
| Liberal Democrat | 12.0% | 71 | −1 | 10.9% |
| SNP | 2.5% | 34 | +25 | 5.2% |
| Others | — | 24 | −3 | 3.7% |
| Green | 10.0% | 16 | +12 | 2.5% |
| Others covers Plaid Cymru, the Northern Ireland parties, independents and the Speaker. Change measured against the 2024 general election. | ||||
Labour is the largest party on 220 and 106 seats short of a majority — a loss of 192 from 2024, the heaviest single-election fall by a governing party in the modern era. The Conservatives shed another 13 to finish third on 108. Reform arrives with 177 seats, up from five.
There is no obvious government in these numbers. Reform and the Conservatives together reach 285, still 41 short. Labour and the Liberal Democrats reach 291, 35 short. Add the SNP and Labour's side lands on 325 — one seat below the line, which is the kind of arithmetic that decides whether a parliament lasts four years or fourteen months.
Labour and Reform poll identically and finish 43 seats apart, because Labour's vote is still stacked in the right places and Reform's is spread thin across seats it comes second in. The Greens take 10% of the national vote and 2.5% of the Commons. The SNP take a quarter of that vote and twice the seats.
The projection has Labour losing 195 constituencies and gaining three. Reform gains 173 and loses one. Almost all of that is a direct transfer: seats Labour won in 2024 on a low share of a fragmented vote, held with margins that a Reform surge erases without Reform ever needing to reach 30%.
The Conservatives are the quieter story. A net loss of 13 hides 23 gains and 36 losses — the party picking up ground where the Labour collapse is sharpest while losing its own seats to Reform elsewhere. The Liberal Democrats barely move: 71 seats, down one, on a vote share essentially unchanged from 2024. Their 2024 gains were built on local incumbency rather than national swing, and this scenario does not test them.
Generated with my UK election simulator. Each of the 650 constituencies starts from its real 2024 baseline; national vote shares are entered per party and applied as proportional swing shaped by ideology and local demographics, then the winner of each seat is called. No threshold, no top-up, no second preferences — first past the post throughout.
This is a hypothetical scenario, not a forecast tied to a date. The next general election is not due until 2029. Vote shares are illustrative and carry no electoral weight.
Change the vote shares, build a stand-aside pact, or model a tactical squeeze and see which seats move.
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