Andy Burnham vs Keir Starmer: how their polling compares
Welcome to the 197th edition of The Week in Polls (TWIP), which takes a look at how the polling for Prime Minister Keir Starmer compares with that of Mayor Andy Burnham.
That is followed by a summary of the latest national voting intentions polls, seat projections from MRPs, and the most recent party leader ratings.
Subscribers who pay for the full edition can also read ten insights from the latest polling and analysis, including:
The importance of the BBC for reaching young voters;
Nearly half the public neither supports nor opposes the Chagos Islands deal; and
Another pollster finds the public’s level of concern over immigration dropping.
If you are not yet a paid subscriber, you can read all ten by starting a free trial now:
For more polling news as it comes in during the week, you can also follow The Week in Polls on Bluesky.
Before that, thank you to one of my readers, Guy, for querying whether I had got right whether Techne’s voting intention polls are of the UK or of Great Britain (i.e. including or excluding Northern Ireland). Thank you also to Techne for confirming that their polls are of the UK, and I have corrected the table I include in this newsletter. In line with my corrections policy below, a free one-year subscription to the paid-for edition of the newsletter is also on its way to Guy.
And with that, on with the show.
What the polls tell us about Andy Burnham
On Saturday afternoon Andy Burnham confirmed he wishes to be Labour’s candidate in the forthcoming Gorton and Denton by-election. The move had multiple facets, raising questions such as whether the move was a precursor to challenging the Prime Minister for leader of the Labour Party and whether Labour could afford to fight a consequential Mayoral by-election.
That previous sentence is, however, in the past tense as on Sunday morning came news that Labour’s National Executive Committee (NEC) had voted to block him from standing. Whether this is the end of the matter or - as with the Diane Abbott saga in 2024 - the start of a controversy that results in a U-turn - will depend on how committed those senior Labour figures opposing a blocking of Burnham really are.
We also have some instant polling from Labour members by Find Out Now,1 carried out after Burnham said he wished to stand but before the NEC voted to block him:
The Manchester MP Andrew Gwynne is expected to step down from parliament. There is speculation that Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham wishes to run in the resulting by-election.
Labour’s ruling national executive committee (NEC) recently changed its rules to require directly elected mayors such as Burnham to seek “express permission” to become a candidate. It is suggested that the NEC is likely to block Burnham’s candidacy.
Do you think the NEC should allow Andy Burnham to run as a candidate?
Yes: 66%
No: 15%
Don’t know: 18%If there were a Labour leadership election, with Keir Starmer and Andy Burnham as candidates, who would you vote for?
Andy Burnham: 48%
Keir Starmer: 26%
Don’t know: 26%
But this is a polling newsletter, so rather than try to forecast Labour’s internal decision making, let’s focus on an underlying issue key to propelling the whole story: Andy Burnham’s poll ratings compared with those of Keir Starmer.
I last looked at this back in September. Before we get to the latest data, a quick recap of the highlights from what we knew from older data, mostly from the previous bout of Burnham speculation around the Labour Party Conference in September 2025:
Andy Burnham has very high name recognition in his Mayoral patch (83% back in 2024), but over half of people could not name a policy associated with him. (See point 7 in TWIP #101.)
Andy Burnham does well, alongside Ed Davey and Nigel Farage, at being seen as human rather than robotic - and much better than Keir Starmer. (See point 1 in TWIP #184.)
In September, Ipsos found that “Andy Burnham is slightly preferred over Keir Starmer [as Prime Minister], though a significant portion of respondents are neutral.”
In the same month, Opinium, had Starmer on net -40 approval rating and Burnham on +10.
Also in September, Savanta polling for The House had people saying by 28%-14% that Burnham would be a better PM than Starmer. This was more than just a wish for a new name regardless, as Ed Miliband, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting all came out worse off than Starmer in similar questions.
Finally, More in Common in the same month suggested that with Burnham as leader Labour would get a five-point bounce in voting intention polls, though heavy caveat: such hypothetical polling has a mixed record.
What does newer data tell us?
Three things, I think - all laced with the caveat that we don’t know how Andy Burnham’s ratings would stand up to the reality of becoming leader or Prime Minister.
Polling in advance can be illuminating though, as shown by Adam Bienkov who pointed out, just before Liz Truss became Prime Minister, that “more British people believe the Earth is flat than believe Liz Truss will be a great Prime Minister.”
So, number one: on basic favourability or approval type questions, Andy Burnham does much better than Keir Starmer, and much better than other national Labour figures, as shown this month by More in Common:
Moreover, Burnham’s popularity includes with those people who most matter to Labour:
It is a similar picture with YouGov, and indeed Burnham’s figures also compare well to those of other party leaders:
But, there are two more things the data tells us.
One is that while Burnham does much better than other Labour figures on several measures, it is far from clear that this is enough to get Labour out of its hole.
If I were spinning against Andy Burnham, I’d be WhatsApping the following Ipsos graph all over the place asking, ‘So you want to plunge us into civil war just to be a net three points WORSE OFF?!’2
Ipsos does also find that people prefer Andy Burnham to Keir Starmer as Prime Minister by 24% to 17% but that does not wash away the problem from the numbers above.
Moreover, Ipsos asked the same questions back in December, and since then Burnham has slipped by a net six points in the Farage match-up, while Starmer is holding steady (up net one point).
Then there is the final thing the data tells us, which is that Burnham’s popularity is geographically skewed. That is hardly surprising as his rhetoric often knocks London and the South East in various ways (such as on Covid and on Treasury funding). Indeed he has even felt the need to tell the (London) Evening Standard that, “Okay, I’ll admit it. I love London. I know you may not have always got that impression from my public statements. But, honestly, I do.”
No surprise then that behind that YouGov net zero approval score is a geographic spread from net +20 in northern England to -11 in southern England outside London (an area that elected one in five of Labour’s MPs in 2024). Likewise, the Ipsos data shows similar, albeit smaller, variation.
You can argue that such variation is a strength or a weakness. But added to the other data it is enough to paint a picture which suggests that personality change from Starmer to Burnham on its own is unlikely to be enough for Labour. Of course, as John Major illustrated with the Poll Tax, personality change can open the path to policy change too.
The questions about Andy Burnham, therefore, shouldn’t just be about whether he should be allowed to stand and about his poll ratings, but also about whether he would offer a credible set of policy changes too.
Elsewhere from me…
If you spot a factual error…
Borrowing an idea from Stuart Ritchie and others, if you spot a factual error in an edition of this newsletter, I will give you a 12-month free subscription to the paid-for version (or an extra 12 months on your existing one). Factual errors qualify rather than grammatical errors or disagreements over interpretation, with my decision being final. Messages about both of those are always very welcome, though.
Are political party members psychopaths?
For the latest episode of Never Mind The Bar Charts I talked with Paul Webb about the report Britain’s Party Members which has new data based on YouGov’s panel on who joins political parties in Britain and what they get up to.
Are Lib Dems the keenest campaigners? Is the emerging two-bloc pattern of British politics reflected in party membership? We talk about these and many more such illuminating questions, revealing some of the basic bedrock on which British politics is built.
Our discussion also includes the report’s analysis of political psychology, based on both the big five traits and the dark triad models – showing differences between parties, and we explore how member preferences shape leadership selection, tactical voting, and party strategy.
We start off though with where the data comes from and how much we can trust it.
You can take a listen here.
Voting intentions and leadership ratings
Here are the latest national voting intention figures. After a run of polls in January showing the Conservatives inching up, the last three all show their support falling slightly. As ever, do not read too much into this, but it may be that just as the wider media narrative is catching up with Kemi Badenoch’s improvement in the polls, the trends are now changing.
The table is also online here. It is updated regularly through the week with new polls.
Next, the latest seat projections from MRPs and similar models, also sorted by fieldwork dates. As these are infrequent, note how old some of the ‘latest’ data is.
Finally, a summary of the latest leadership ratings, sorted by pollster name:
The table is also online here with additional details, and is updated regularly through the week as new data comes out.
For the historic figures for both voting intention and leader approval, including Parliamentary by-election polls, see PollBase.
Catch up on the previous two editions
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Photo of newspaper by Andrys Stienstra from Pixabay.
BBC key for reaching future 16-year old voters, and 9 other polling insights you shouldn’t miss
The following 10 findings from the most recent polls and analysis are only for subscribers who pay for the full edition, but you can sign up for a free trial to read them straight away.
With the Westminster Parliament very likely to legislate for voters at 16,3 extending a right already in place for some elections in the UK, you can expect to hear plenty in the next few years about the need for politicians to abandon old ways of communicating and instead embrace TikTok, Snapchat and EchoVibe.4
But new research from Public First, based on focus groups with Year 8 pupils,
