Seats visited by party leaders on day 13: Key election data

The Labour and Lib Dem leaders have both held events in Tory-held target seats.

Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey and his party’s candidate for Cheadle, Tom Morrison, play Jenga during a visit to Cheadle, Greater Manchester during day 13 of the election campaign (Peter Byrne/PA) (PA Wire)

By a happy statistical coincidence, both Sir Keir Starmer and Sir Ed Davey spent Tuesday morning visiting the seats that are ranked at number eight on their respective parties’ target lists.

The Labour leader was in the constituency of Bolton North East in Greater Manchester, where the Conservatives are defending a notional majority of 1,278.

The Liberal Democrat leader was not too far away in Cheadle, also in Greater Manchester, where the Tories are defending a notional majority of 2,336.

Both seats would change hands on relatively small swings, with Labour needing a swing of 1.3 percentage points in Bolton North East, and the Lib Dems needing a swing of 2.1 points in Cheadle.

It is the second time this week Sir Keir has visited a constituency that is one of his party’s top 10 targets, following an event on Monday in Bury North (number seven on the list).

Bolton North East was won by Mark Logan for the Conservatives at the 2019 general election, having previously been a Labour seat since 1997.

Mr Logan is not standing at this election and announced on May 30 that he is planning to vote for Labour on polling day.

A total of five seats in north-west England are in Labour’s top 10; along with Bury North and Bolton North East, they are Burnley (ranked at number one), Leigh & Atherton (number two) and Bury South (number six).

Sir Ed Davey’s visit to Cheadle means the Lib Dem leader has now made appearances in five of his party’s top 10 targets.

Along with Cheadle (number eight on the list), Sir Ed has visited Wimbledon (number three), Cambridgeshire South (number five), Cheltenham (number six) and Eastbourne (number nine).

Cheadle has been represented by the Tories since 2015, having previously been held by the Lib Dems since 2001.

Later on Tuesday, Sir Ed visited Shropshire North: a seat that is a long way down his party’s target list – number 271 – and where the notional Conservative majority in 2019 was 20,543.

A huge swing of 25.7 percentage points would be needed for the Liberal Democrats to win Shropshire North – though the party has managed to pull off even bigger swings in recent by-elections.

Sir Ed has now visited 14 constituencies across the UK since the first full day of the campaign, most of which (12) are being defended at the election by the Conservatives.

Sir Keir has visited 16, 12 of which are Tory defences.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is not due to carry out any campaign visits on Tuesday.

He has visited 24 constituencies since the start of the campaign, 21 of which are being defended by the Conservatives.