Bristol Central Odds: Can the Greens overturn huge Labour majority?

Caroline Lucas has been ploughing her own furrow in Westminster for the Green Party ever since being elected as the MP for Brighton Pavilion back in 2010. 

There is hope however that the Greens will not be a one-woman band in the next parliament as they are gunning for a big victory in the West Country. We check out their chances and the latest Bristol Central Odds…

One thing we can be sure of is that Caroline Lucas won’t be representing the party alone in the House of Commons but that is solely because the former leader is stepping down as an MP. The Greens will be putting in a lot of effort to hold that seat but they are increasingly confident of a second victory, this time down in Bristol Central.

One of the reasons that they have plenty of confidence is that people there went to the polls earlier this month in local elections and the Green Party candidates won every single ward that makes-up the newly-formed constituency boundaries. That is certainly a statistic that makes you sit up and take notice.

Bristol Central is made up of around 70% of the old Bristol West constituency and that was a seat that saw some pretty wild vote swings in recent elections. The Lib Dems won it from Labour back in 2005 but it was part of the great yellow purge in 2015 as a majority of 11,365 went to being beaten into third place and more than 10,000 votes behind Labour.

It was the Greens that vaulted into second, which left them thinking it was a top target seat but the Jeremy Corbyn-era Labour Party was always going to have extremely strong roots in this university-dominated constituency and in 2017 and 2019, they would get more than 60% of the vote and romp home with ease.

Labour though are a very different beast these days and whilst in many seats, the more moderate and Centrist version that we see today is a net positive, in a seat like Bristol Central, where the youth vote is vitally important, it is a negative. This means that despite having a 28,219 majority, albeit on the old boundaries and with the Red Rose Party riding high in the polls, this is by no means a slam dunk victory for the incumbent.

In fact, the odds say that the Green Party are the 4/7 favourites in the seat, with Labour 5/4 to get the victory. That is quite surprising on the surface and I can’t help but think the market are overlooking one vital component to this election, the date.

July 4 is after most university students have gone home for the summer and unless the Green Party are extremely active and can get people signed up for a postal ballot, plenty of those votes could disappear into the ether. This whole election could well turn on how well this voting bloc turns out.

All things being equal, I think this seat is ripe for the taking and potentially doubling the Green Party representation in the House of Commons but that summer date really does have me a tad concerned. I am going with Labour as the value play here at odds-against, with the Greens within touching distance but falling agonisingly short. It would be no shock whatsoever if it was once again their top target seat next time around.

We’ll cover this ongoing story from now through to General Election day itself from our team here at Betfred Insights. Keep checking out our coverage from the Next Prime Minister markets through to key individual constituencies over the coming weeks as we follow the twists and turns from a betting perspective for the 2024 General Election in our Politics Betting Tips section.