Politics Home | Makerfield Defeat Underlines How Tactical Voting Could Frustrate Farage

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Makerfield was not only a Reform target seat, but a constituency where the party enjoyed its sixth-highest vote share in the 2024 general election. 

In the run-up to polling day, some opinion polls pointed to a close contest between Labour candidate Burnham and his Reform rival Robert Kenyon. 

In the end, however, the former health secretary cruised to victory in the Makerfield by-election, winning over 50 per cent of the vote, 20 per cent ahead of second-place Kenyon.

Farage himself admitted that he did not see Burnham’s “emphatic, dramatic” win coming.

Burnham, who is now expected to replace Keir Starmer in No 10, not only finished way ahead of Reform, but won more votes than all other candidates combined. 

The aggregate vote for the parties of the right and the aggregate votes for the left stayed roughly the same in Makerfield compared to the 2024 general election, and yet Labour was able to increase its majority by nearly 10 per cent. 

Reform’s vote share increased by nearly three per cent. Meanwhile, the Green vote in the seat fell by around four per cent compared to two years ago, the Lib Dems fell by six per cent, and the Conservative support collapsed by nearly nine per cent. 

These changes suggest that significant numbers of people who previously voted for the Green Party and the Lib Dems this time voted Labour – either to keep Reform out, or to secure a victory for Burnham in order to potentially oust Starmer as prime minister. 

Commentator and former president of YouGov Peter Kellner has argued that if Reform is to win a majority at the next general election, it needs to win seats like Makerfield by a mile – but the results show that seat-by-seat tactical voting could “cost Reform dear”.  

Reform already fell short of winning the Caerphilly Senedd by-election to Plaid Cymru and the Gorton and Denton parliamentary by-election to the Green Party, largely because anti-Reform voters coalesced around Plaid and the Greens respectively in each contest to prevent Reform winning. 

Kellner told PoliticsHome that these three by-elections show that tactical voting will be absolutely crucial for the next general election. 

He explained that up to now, Reform has been unable to unite voters on the right in the way that parties of the left have managed in recent contests.

In Makerfield, Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain won 7 per cent of the vote – a level of support that could cost Farage in more closely fought seats.

“The Tory vote didn’t collapse quite as much as the Liberal-Green vote, but the Tories went down, and Restore intervened, so you’ve got a sort of complicated thing on the right,” Kellner said. 

“But the net effect was that whereas tactical voting enabled Labour to come very, very close to monopolising the ‘progressive’ votes, Reform was completely unable to monopolise anything like the same extent those on the right.”

He said at a general election level, when you expand the concept of tactical voting to 650 constituencies, the winning party will be the one which is most successful in monopolising their left or right bloc.

Sophie Stowers, research manager at pollster More in Common, said that while tactical voting played a part in Makerfield, it was only “part of the story”.

She explained that even if 2024 Green and Lib Dem voters hadn’t switched to Burnham as the results suggest, he still would have won more votes than Reform and Restore Britain put together. “It is maybe more to do with Andy Burnham being able to unite that left flank, more so than [voters] consciously mobilising against Reform,” she said.

“Clearly, there was a failure to coordinate on the right, but Restore mobilised different kinds of voters as well – they probably got some people to turn out who wouldn’t have even turned out to vote for Reform.”

She described Makerfield as a “really small-scale test” of tactical voting, but said that the upcoming Greater Manchester mayoral election to replace Burnham would potentially be a better example and a bigger test of the extent to which tactical voting could threaten Reform’s chances at forming a government at the next general election.

Former Green leader Caroline Lucas told The House magazine that Zack Polanski’s party would “throw everything” at the contest to elect Burnham’s successor.

Stowers added: “It’s quite hard to disaggregate from one by-election; it’s a very specific context.

“It’s hard to know at this point, but if Burnham continues to be effective at uniting progressives behind him in an anti-right-wing vote, then that is a problem for [Reform] on a larger scale.”

Reform figures believe left-leaning voters are increasingly willing to vote tactically to keep the party out of office, and increasingly, they acknowledge that this could pose a growing electoral challenge.

A senior Reform source told PoliticsHome the tactical voting against the party “certainly presents its challenges”, but insisted that Makerfield was a unique contest due to it also potentially being a contest to choose Starmer’s successor as prime minister. 

“The one thing that probably unites the whole country is the will to get rid of Keir Starmer.”

Reform is hoping that the ‘Burnham effect’ will not carry over to other seats around the country that Farage’s party hopes to win at the next general election.

In ‘Red Wall’ areas like Nottinghamshire, the Lib Dems and Greens are barely present, making it more difficult for parties on the left to unite the vote against Reform. 

The same could be said of areas like Essex, or many Reform-facing seaside towns with economies and demographics that are very different to that of Greater Manchester.

“Fine margins will be the difference between 250 seats or 350 seats,” the Reform source said.

“Every party is trying to navigate a whole new set of balancing acts.”

They acknowledged Reform could have done better on expectation management ahead of the Makerfield by-election, with leading figures in the party having talked up its chances.

“You obviously don’t want supporters to be grafting away and end up disappointed too regularly,” they said.

“We’re all trying to navigate this world of five-party politics; inevitably, it will be ever-changing and also require a lot of local nuance in these campaigns. It’s a constant learning curve, but particularly for a party that’s only really maybe two years old in terms of operating at this level.”