2026 Greater Manchester mayoral election visualised

We’ve got a new mayor after the last one took a job in London, but what do the results tell us?

The 2026 Greater Manchester mayoral election took place on 30 July, and was won by the Labour candidate, Bev Craig.

When Andy Burnham won the Makerfield parliamentary seat, a vacancy opened up for GM mayor, hence the mayoral by-election.

There will still be a mayoral election in Greater Manchester in May 2028, as originally scheduled.

The main polls (YouGov, More In Common, Find Out Now) predicted Labour winning the mayoralty, but with voting going to the second round because no candidate was expected to receive more than 50% of first-choice votes. The numbers were slightly off in all cases, but they got it broadly right.

In fact, all three polling organisations underestimated Labour’s vote share from the first-choice votes, but got the second round figures almost spot-on.

First choice votes

A graph showing the percentage share of first preference votes for each of the candidates in the 2026 Greater Manchester mayoral election. These are as follows:
Bev Craig, Labour & Co-op - 47.1%
Sian Niamh Astley, Reform UK - 21.0%
Geraldine Coggins, Green - 12.2%
Marlon Scott West, Restore Britain - 8.7%
Phil Eckersley, Conservative - 7.7%
Richard Martin Kilpatrick, Liberal Democrats - 2.8%
Marcus Jonathan Farmer, Independent - 0.6% — Share of 1st choice votes

Candidate	Party	1st round votes	% of 1st round votes
Bev Craig	Labour & Co-op	251,449	47.1%
Sian Niamh Astley	Reform UK	111,928	21.0%
Geraldine Coggins	Green	64,968	12.2%
Marlon Scott West	Restore Britain	46,289	8.7%
Phil Eckersley	Conservative	41,021	7.7%
Richard Martin Kilpatrick	Liberal Democrats	14,702	2.8%
Marcus Jonathan Farmer	Independent	2,969	0.6%

Source: GM Elects

From the first round of votes, Labour’s Bev Craig led with 47.1%. The Green hype seems to have died down a bit since the Gorton & Denton by-election, as Reform overtook them to take second place at 21%.

This is the first GM mayoral election in which second-choice votes have mattered. In previous years, an outright winner was declared after round one of voting because Andy Burnham consistently achieved over 50% of the vote in every mayoral election he stood in*.

*In 2024, the mayoral election used the first-past-the-post system, following reforms contained in the Elections Act 2022, but Andy Burnham still won 63.4% of the vote. The English Devolution & Community Empowerment Act 2026 allowed a return to the Supplementary Vote system for this year’s election.

Adding the supplementary votes

A graphic explaining how the Supplementary Vote system works. The process is as follows: Electors choose a first choice candidate in Column 'A', and their second choice in Column 'B'. The votes only from Column 'A' are counted first. If one candidate gets more than 50% of the vote, they win. Otherwise, if no candidate gets more than 50%, all candidates except the top two are eliminated. All the votes (1st and 2nd choices) from Columns 'A' and 'B' are counted for just the top two candidates. The one with the most votes after this round of counting is the winner.

The result after counting all the first and second choice votes for the Labour and Reform candidates was:

Candidate	Party	Total 1st & 2nd preference votes	% vote share
Bev Craig	Labour & Co-op	309,525	66.3%
Sian Niamh Astley	Reform UK	157,178	33.7%

Source: GM Elects

Vote share in different council areas

Labour was the highest-polling party over the whole region, but there were some notable variations between boroughs.

We can see from the graph below that the Reform vote share was inversely proportional to that of Labour, i.e. boroughs with higher numbers of Labour voters had correspondingly lower Reform votes, and vice versa.

While Manchester had the highest Labour vote, it also provided the greatest showing of Green voters. Other boroughs with Green local councillors saw a slight rise in Green mayoral votes, yet remained close to the mean GM Green vote share of 12.2%.

The Conservatives did poorly, with right-leaning voters split between them, Reform and Restore.

If we assign each of the parties to broadly left- and right-wing groupings (yes, we know it’s not that simple), there’s roughly a 2:1 ratio of left vs. right voting (LAB + GRN + LIB = 62.1%, CON + REF + RES = 37.4%).

Even if all of the right-wing parties had united under one banner, they would not have secured enough votes to beat the Labour winner.

The Liberal Democrats popularity on (some) local councils did not translate to the mayoral election, with them finishing as the worst-performing mainstream party across all council areas. Only in Stockport did they make a noticeable impression with voters.

A graph showing the variation in vote share for each party across the ten Greater Manchester boroughs. — Vote share per party in each borough

Turnout

Overall turnout for this election was low, at 25.14%. Turnout has been low in previous years, but this is the lowest so far in a GM mayoral election.

Turnout was above 30% only in Stockport and Trafford, at 31% and 35% respectively.

A bar chart showing the size of the electorate and the turnout for each of the four years there has been a mayoral election in Greater Manchester. The values are as follows: 2017 - electorate 1,984,578, turnout 28.90% 2021 - electorate 2,057,643, turnout 34.74% 2024 - electorate 2,088,644, turnout 32.05% 2026 - electorate 2,142,779, turnout 25.14% — Electorate size and turnout per year

Year	Electorate	Turnout
2017		28.9%
2021		34.74%
2024		32.05%
2026		25.14%

Source: gmelects.org.uk

Typically, turnout in both GM local elections and the general election is higher than this. In the 2026 local elections, turnout ranged from 25% in Tameside to 48.9% in Trafford. The last general election, in 2024, yielded a turnout of 59.7%.

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Featured image: public domain image from Flickr