Why is no one polling the West Midlands?

We know nothing about the biggest contest in next month's local elections

The West Midlands mayoral election according to Microsoft Copilot

The biggest election you’ve heard nothing about

Next month more than 3 million voters across seven boroughs in the West Midlands will elect their Mayor for the third time. The West Midlands Mayoralty, first contested in 2016, is the largest devolved election outside of London, and by far the largest with a Conservative incumbent.

So far the West Midlands has had only one Mayor: the Conservative former managing director of John Lewis, Andy Street. Having won twice when the national mood was friendly towards his party, Street is now bidding for a third term in a much colder climate. Street has built a strong personal brand as an independent, relatively non-partisan figure who gets things done. He has been a regular public critic of his own party, most recently over the cancellation of the second phase of HS2. His bid for a third term is a crucial test of the ability of a relatively well known and well liked incumbent to build a personal brand and support base independent of the their chosen party.

At least one of Street’s former advisors, Onward Deputy Director Adam Hawksbee, is confident that his former boss can defy the national polling and win again, saying in Mayoral contests "The party brand matters far less than personal delivery.” Street, he believes, has delivered, and West Midlands voters will reward him for it. Is he right?

Street’s past performances - good but not great

Street’s has some electoral pedigree, having twice won a swing City Region by substantial margins. However, when he first won 42% in 2017, he was bouyed up by Conservative post-Brexit national strength, with Theresa May’s Tories polling 46% in the weeks before the May 2017 contest, meaning Street actually underperformed Conservative national polling by four points.

Street did much better in his second campaign, winning re-election with 49% of the first preference vote, running well ahead of the national Tories even as they were riding high during the “vaccine bounce”, polling an average of 42% in April 2021.

Conservative and Labour first preference vote performances relative to national polls in 2017 and 2021

National poll numbers are poll averages for the month before the Mayoral elections from Mark Pack’s PollBase

While Street has polled strongly twice, so have his defeated Labour opponents, Sion Simon and Liam Byrne. Simon secured 41% at a time when Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour was polling 27%, meaning he achieved an impressive 14 point outperformance. Byrne managed 40% on first preferences when Keir Starmer’s Labour was trailing Boris Johnson’s Conservatives on 35% - a 5 point outperformance. This could be seen as a further plus for the Tory incumbent - he has twice defeated relatively strong Labour opponents.

Or it may suggest that Street is not in fact such a strong electoral performer after all. The tendency for both Labour and Conservative candidates to outperform their national polling may reflect stronger two party politics in the West Midlands, a region with a lot of Tory vs Labour marginal seats and a limited Liberal Democrat presence. Perhaps Street hasn’t built much of a personal vote beyond this, but instead benefitted from twice running in a region where the Conservatives are relatively strong, and at times when Labour are relatively weak. With only two Mayoral contests to go on, it is hard to know for sure.

Winning in a cold climate

Whatever explains his past performances, we know for sure that Andy Street will have to up his game to win again, as his third election campaign is taking place in a much tougher national context. The Conservatives are currently polling around 24% , while Labour are on 43%. If we apply the same leans to the Mayoral contest as operated last time, then Street would go down to a heavy defeat, winning 31% vs 48% for his Labour opponent.

Two past Conservative incumbents have done better than this. In 2012, Boris Johnson outperformed mediocre national Tory polling by 11 points to secure re-election, defeating former Labour Mayor Ken Livingstone under-performed Labour polling by one point. But even a Johnson-level outperformance would not save Street - applying similar leans to current polling would still see Labour winning comfortably 42%-35%.

Andy Street needs to look further north, and seek lessons from the landslide re-election of Tees Valley mayor Ben Houchen in 2021. Houchen outperformed national polling by more than 30 points on first preference votes when he won re-election. If Street can accumulate a similarly chunky personal vote, then he will be able to hang on despite a toxic national Tory brand.

Projections of 2024 West Midlands results from current polling with 2021 West Midlands leans, 2012 London Leans

While Street is well liked and seen as competent, this is a big ask. But the Mayor may also benefit from two factors which could hamper Labour performance and help sway voters back to the Conservative banner. This first is the bankruptcy of Birmingham’s Labour run council. While this is the culmination of various long running issues built up under both Labour and Conservative administrations, Street can use the largest and highest profile local authority bankruptcy to date to draw favourable dividing lines, blaming Labour profligacy for Birmingham’s bankruptcy, and contrasting this with his own reputation for competent administration.

The West Midlands - particularly Birmingham - also has a large Muslim electorate. Two polls of Muslims so far this year suggest that Labour support may be softening with this group, and while Muslim alienation from Labour over the Gaza conflict and other issues is unlikely to be a major factor in the general election, any troubles Labour has winning over or turning out Muslim voters could be crucial in a close fought West Midlands election.

Why the West Midlands matters

The West Midlands contest is high stakes for both parties. There are ten Conservative held constituencies in the West Midlands combined authority which Labour could plausibly win on current polling. Labour won nine of these seats (or their predecessors) when it was last in government - all except Sutton Coldfield - and the latest YouGov MRP model projects Labour to win all nine again at the next general election.

A decisive win for Labour in the Mayoralty contest will boost confidence that Keir Starmer remains on course to take his party to Downing Street after 14 years of opposition. But if Andy Street holds on, it will boost Tory morale and raise hopes that the party can still cling on in some battleground seats in the region, particularly if Street runs up large margins in the outer boroughs of Walsall, Wolverhampton and Dudley where he has won before, and where several key Tory marginals are located. A Street win will also send a broader message, suggesting that voters are still willing to reward competent leadership and delivery on bread and butter issues from a Conservative politician. That could be an important message for a national Conservative party divided over how to respond to the resurgent right wing populism of ReformUK in the general election and beyond.

Labour target constituencies within the West Midlands Combined Authority

The West Midlands matters for more than political party bragging rights. Combined authority mayors haven’t been around for long, and many represent areas such as Merseyside and Greater Manchester where one party has a huge local advantage. There haven’t been many competitive mayoralty elections. Nor have there been many contests where an incumbent who won in favourable circumstances has sought re-election in a harsher climate. This year’s West Midlands election, along with the Tees Valley re-election campaign of Ben Houchen, tick both boxes. They are therefore a key for the theory that city region devolution can deliver a more diverse and pluralistic politics, with combined authority Mayors and marching to the beat of their own drums, and local voters delivering verdicts which can buck national trends. Wins for Street or Houchen are wins for this model of devolved politics, while wins for their Labour opponents will suggest even talented, high profile mayors can be swept away by national tides.

Where is the polling?

Given the size of the prize, the stakes for the parties, and the broader implications for models of devolution, the West Midlands Mayoral race should be attracting a lot more attention than it is. So far the London Mayoral race, which looks much less competitive, has been much more discussed. One reason is that the London race has been polled regularly, while so far there has been no reliable polling at all on the West Midlands contest.

This is not due to technical barriers. While it is difficult and expensive to conduct a reliable poll on a single constituency, polling a city region with 3 million residents - the size of a small European nation - is perfectly feasible. Indeed, pollsters have done it before. There were three polls of the last West Midlands race, by FindOutNow, Redfield and Wilton and Opinium. All correctly put Street ahead, and two of the three were very close to the outcome (Opinium, who polled closest to the election, somewhat overstated Street’s strength).

So far, none of these pollsters have published a look at the current contest, nor has anyone else. So we have nothing to go on when trying to assess Andy Street’s strength, and his ability to buck national trends. That is a great shame - devolved institutions should provide an opportunity to move the focus of political conversations away from Westminster, and a hard fought contest in one of England’s largest metro areas should provide an ideal opportunity for just such a shift.

Therefore, I’d like to end with a plea: if you’re reading this, and you are a pollster, or you know a pollster, or you commission polls, then please: poll the West Midlands Mayoralty. The results are bound to be interesting, and whatever they show, they will teach us something valuable about the state of opinion in a crucial battleground region, and help jolt the political conversation out of the well ploughed, London and Westminster focussed furrow. That’s surely worth doing?

Graphs and text updated at 3.15 pm to correct errors in the first version. Thanks to readers on Twitter/X for flagging these up.