u/Alt_History6

Labour MP Josh Simons has resigned in the constituency of Makersfield to give Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham a route into Parliament, but can Andy actually win Makersfield?

If he were a regular Labour figure Burnham would be ruthlessly destroyed in this constituency, as the local election results were not good for Labour:
50.4% Reform
22.7% Labour
10.9% Green
9.9% Conservative
3.8% Lib Dem

However Burnham is uniquely popular, in the Manchester mayoral election which took place a couple weeks before the 2024 general election, Burnham got 63.4% of the vote. In the General Election Labour would go on to get only 42.8% of the vote in Greater Manchester.

He still faces problems however, Makerfield is Reform's strongest constituency in Wigan and was also the strongest ward in Wigan for the left wing third parties.

However once again Burnham performs better than Labour as a whole here, out of 10 wards in Greater Manchester, Wigan was his 4th strongest in the mayoral election and was the weakest for the Lib Dems and Greens. It also happened to be the strongest ward for Reform, another point against him.

In the general election in 2024 Labour got 47% in Wigan's constituencies compared to Burnham's 66.1% in the Mayoral election.

As for third parties they are a minor concern but could still do enough damage to chip away at Burnham and the Reform candidate. The Greens and Workers Party are unlikely to be an enormous threat to Burnham, as the constituency is very white, although they'll certainly hurt him, meanwhile Restore and the Conservatives are also running, but are unlikely to do too much damage to Reform, especially as Restore has not campaigned outside of Great Yarmouth before.

Makerfield used to be one of the safest Labour seats in the country, and it never fell to the Conservatives in 2017 or 2019 when the Red Wall broke and Brexit was at its height, despite voting Leave by 65%. Burnham is the exact candidate that can possibly attract older Labour voters, however it remains to be seen whether his personal popularity is enough to overcome Labour's working class decline.

In Quarter 4 of 2025 Jim Pillen’s approval rating dropped to only +6, Morning Consult hasn’t released any 2026 approvals yet, but it’s safe to say this is a very bad approval rating.

He is tied with Kotek in Oregon and Stitt in Oklahoma, two well known unpopular governors and only Braun in Indiana, Reynolds in Iowa and Dunleavy in Alaska are more unpopular. So he is tied 4th for least popular governor.

His presumptive opponent, Lynne Walz is also very impressive. Despite having a nonpartisan legislature, in 2020 only 3 senators were elected to a district that voted for the opposite party in the presidential election.

Walz was one of those Senators and won her district with 59% of the vote. Trump won her district with 65% of the vote. The second largest disparity was a democrat who won a district Trump won with 57% by 1% of the vote. So this kind of over performance is not at all common.

No one talks about this race or about Walz, but it seems like she could very well be the Laura Kelly of Nebraska.