Britain’s biggest ever by-election is taking place on Thursday, with an electorate of more than two million people set to go to the polls to decide who will succeed Andy Burnham as the mayor of Greater Manchester.
The new prime minister had to give up the job leading the Combined Authority after nine years in June when he was elected MP for Makerfield.
Mr Burnham became the region’s first directly elected mayor in 2017, and was re-elected in 2021 and 2024 - coming first in all 10 boroughs of Greater Manchester, with more than 60 per cent of the vote across the region each time.
More in Common’s latest poll predicts that Labour’s Bev Craig will beat Reform’s Sian Astley by 65 per cent to 35 per cent in the second round of this election, which will use the supplementary voting system – as was the case in 2017 and 2021.
It would be the first time that a Greater Manchester mayoral election has gone to a second round, however, as Ms Craig is not predicted to clear the 50 per cent of first-choice votes required to win in the first round.
Ms Craig has led Manchester City Council since 2021 and has worked closely with Mr Burnham during his time as mayor, serving as the combined authority’s member for the economy and business.
Her party is enjoying a ‘Burnham bounce’ nationally, leading in some polls over Reform and this election will be the first test at the ballot box for the new prime minister - in a region where he is very popular.
With a Labour win likely, the battle for second place could prove to be interesting.
The Green Party won the Greater Manchester parliamentary seat of Gorton and Denton earlier this year and made significant gains on Labour in Manchester wards in May’s local elections.
Though Reform suffered bruising defeats in Gorton and Denton and in Makerfield, they too made gains from Labour in Greater Manchester in the local elections and are popular in some of the outer boroughs, including Wigan, Bolton and Tameside.
Ahead of Thursday’s election, The Independent spoke to voters in Manchester about who they hope wins and what they expect from their next mayor.
“I worked at Manchester Council when Bev was coming up through the ranks.
“She was a good councillor, and I think she's been a really good leader. She picked up quite a big job from [former council leader] Richard Leese.
“I'm quite optimistic about her because she's worked with Andy before, and I'm also optimistic about all the other city mayors. I think that's the way to do it.
“But I also think Bev will have it much easier than he did, because he understands what she needs to be successful.
“On housing, people give him a lot of grief about not fixing homelessness, but you can't fix it through vibes alone.
“You need investment, new house building, and all the stuff that the government controls to fix that specific problem. It's linked to poverty and cost of living.”
“I’m voting for Bev. Having listened to the candidates on TV this week, they all gave a little bit of a speech, and I thought she was the only real one.
“The things she was talking about were things that people want to make things better for them, not miles away, or for people who live in a big house in Cheshire or anything. It was very, very real.
“And she's been with Burnham all the way through him being mayor.
“That's why it'd be even better if Bev got it, because they've worked together so long on so many different things.”
“I’m voting Labour because I think they have better leadership in Manchester.
“Andy Burnham’s been a good mayor here, so I hope the successor will be good.
“I was thinking about voting for the Green Party, but we’ve not seen them leading the country. I was confused if I should vote for them or not but I’m not convinced.
“If we've seen what they've done, then I would have thought about them. But until now I’ve not seen anything.
“Their representative came to my office as well. I wasn't convinced that they were ready to run a city.
“Stopping Reform is also important to me because we are so many communities living together, and we want peace, we want to be happy.
“If it continues with them, the country will be lost very soon.”
“I was a lifelong Labour supporter, but what a mess it is now. Blair was the beginning of the end because it changed Labour. It made it something that wasn't Labour.
“Labour have blown it. Even though they've got Andy Burnham, he's exactly the same.
“But the Greens have got their heads screwed on. Everything that they talk about, they're right on with all of it: rights for the individual, no matter who you are.
“I see them as the future and this is a place of change. This happens historically in Manchester. We got Green in [at the Gorton and Denton by-election], and hopefully we're going to have a Green mayor.”
Ben told The Independent: “At first I didn’t know what I’d prefer - would you rather Andy Burnham to be prime minister and have a Labour leader in power, but lose the mayor?
“Honestly, having some mates who want to vote Reform, I didn’t know which way it was going to go.
“I think there's a lot of people, especially around Makerfield, who were going to vote Reform until he came in as the candidate there.
“He genuinely has a big personality that people like, and they think, ‘Oh, right, that's proper Labour finally.’
“In this election, for a while I was swayed towards Green a bit, but I don't know what's going on with Green at the moment. I haven't heard much about them.
“Hopefully now Burnham’s got Number 10 North here, he's still going to have some sway (in Greater Manchester). It's not all just going to be a new mayor taking over and doing their own thing.”
“The polls predicting a Labour win is not a surprise to me. Greater Manchester is 10 boroughs, but I think what you'll find is that the Manchester wards, many of them, possibly the majority of them, will go to the Greens.
“But what has happened is that the Green Party has yet to make serious inroads in places like Bolton and Rochdale and Wigan.
“I saw it in Makerfield. You know, we're basically just outnumbered. I know some people like to dream of us getting a sweeping 10-borough victory across the nation; we're not there yet, if we ever get there.
“There's a Burnham bounce going on nationally, and you're getting that across Manchester as well.
“As I said to somebody from the Green Party last night we were chatting to, it was like, ‘If Burnham wasn't prime minister, then we'd probably be doing much better.’
“And it was like, "If Burnham wasn't prime minister, we wouldn't be having the mayoral election.’
“There are parts of Burnham's rhetoric that I am encouraged by, and if the further we can pull Burnham back towards the policies of the politics of democratic socialism and progressive ideas and so on, the better.”
The seven candidates competing to succeed Mr Burnham in Thursday’s by-election are, in alphabetical order, Sian Astley (Reform), Geraldine Coggins (Green), Bev Craig (Labour), Phil Eckersley (Conservative), Marcus Farmer (Independent), Richard Kilpatrick (Liberal Democrats) and Marlon West (Restore Britain).
