Greens make history at Gorton and Denton: Key numbers and milestones
It is the first time in nearly 100 years that the Gorton area of Manchester will not have been represented by a Labour MP.
The Greens have made history with their victory at Gorton and Denton.
It is the first time the party has won a by-election for a seat in the House of Commons.
The result gives the Greens their first-ever parliamentary seat in the north of England.
It is also the first time in nearly 100 years that the Gorton area of Manchester will not have been represented by a Labour MP.
The seat of Gorton and Denton was created at the 2024 general election, replacing the previous constituency of Manchester Gorton.
Labour held Manchester Gorton continuously from 1935 to its abolition in 2024.
One of the MPs during this period was William Wedgwood Benn, father of the former cabinet minister Tony Benn and grandfather of the current Northern Ireland Secretary Hilary Benn.
Another was Sir Gerald Kaufman, who was MP for Manchester Gorton for 34 years from 1983 to his death in 2017.
When the constituency was abolished, the new seat of Gordon and Denton was won in 2024 by Andrew Gwynne for Labour with a majority of 13,413.
This was just outside one of Labour’s top 50 biggest wins in 2024.
It now ranks as the sixth largest Labour majority to be overturned at a by-election since the Second World War.
Among the five larger majorities is the one at Runcorn & Helsby that Reform overturned at a by-election in 2024, which was 14,696.
The largest Labour majority to be overturned at a by-election since 1945 is 22,915, which was achieved by the Conservatives at Ashfield in Nottinghamshire in 1977.
Labour’s share of the vote in Gorton and Denton almost halved, falling from 50.7% in 2024 to 25.4% in the by-election, a drop of 25.3 percentage points.
This is one of the party’s biggest falls in vote share at a by-election this century, behind only Norwich North in 2009 (where it dropped 26.7 points), Birmingham Hodge Hill in 2004 (27.4 points), Brent East in 2003 (29.4 points) and Rochdale in 2024 (43.9 points).
By contrast, the Greens increased their vote share in Gorton and Denton from 13.2% in 2024 to 40.7%.
Their new vote share is just below the bottom end of what the party achieved across the four seats it won at the 2024 general election, which ranged from 41.7% of the vote in Waveney Valley to 56.6% in Bristol Central.
It is also the Greens’ highest vote share in a parliamentary by-election, easily beating their previous best of 10.2% in the contest in Somerton and Frome in 2023.
The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats were squeezed almost out of existence, with the parties polling 1.9% (down from 7.9%) and 1.8% (down from 3.8%) respectively.
Reform more than doubled its share of the vote from 14.1% in 2024 to 28.7%.
This ranks as the party’s second best performance at a by-election, behind only the 38.7% they achieved at Runcorn and Helsby in 2024, where they won the seat.
Hannah Spencer’s win for the Greens means the party will now have five MPs in the House of Commons, its highest ever number.
She joins Sian Berry in Brighton Pavilion; Carla Denyer, MP for Bristol Central; Ellie Chowns in North Herefordshire and Adrian Ramsay, MP for Waveney Valley.
The turnout at Gorton and Denton, after adjusting for spoiled ballot papers, was 47.5%.
This is higher than at the Runcorn and Helsby by-election in 2024, where turnout was 46.2%.
It is also the highest turnout at a parliamentary by-election since 52.2% at Tiverton and Honiton in June 2022.
