Greens win Gorton and Denton by-election as Labour crash to third place amid increasing pressure on Starmer
Hannah Spencer won the seat, overturning a Labour majority of more than 13,000 votes
The Green Party's Hannah Spencer has won the Gorton & Denton by-election overturning a Labour majority of more than 13,000 to heap pressure on Sir Keir Starmer's premiership.
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Spencer won the Greater Manchester seat with 14,980 votes, ahead of Reform UK's Matt Goodwin in second with 10,578.
Her majority was 4,402.
Local plumber Spencer has become the party's fifth MP, as their new leader Zack Polanski took the Greens to their first-ever parliamentary by-election win.
Labour slumped to third in the poll, with Angeliki Stogia winning just 9,364 votes.
Gorton & Denton have been Labour areas for nearly the entire last century.
This election was a victory for sectarian voting and cheating.
— Nigel Farage MP (@Nigel_Farage) February 27, 2026
Matt Goodwin was a great candidate for us.
Roll on the elections on May 7th.
It will be goodbye Starmer and goodbye to the Tory party.
The time while votes were being counted was dominated by discussion sparked by poll watchers raising concerns over "concerningly high levels of family voting" in the area's crunch by-election.
Family voting is an illegal practice where two voters either confer, collude or direct each other on voting and can involve husbands telling their wives how to vote.
Election observers, Democracy Volunteers, said they attended 22 of the 45 polling stations in the constituency on Thursday, and claimed to have witnessed family voting in 15 locations.
The non-partisan group alleged they observed a sample of 545 individuals casting their vote and saw 32 cases of family voting in total, including nine cases in one polling station.
John Ault, director of Democracy Volunteers, said: "Today we have seen concerningly high levels of family voting in Gorton and Denton. Based on our assessment of today's observations, we have seen the highest levels of family voting at any election in our 10-year history of observing elections in the UK.
"We rarely issue a report on the night of an election, but the data we have collected today on family voting, when compared to other recent by-elections, is extremely high.
"In the other recent Westminster parliamentary by-election in Runcorn and Helsby we saw family voting in 12 per cent of polling stations, affecting one per cent of voters.
"In Gorton and Denton, we observed family voting in 68 per cent of polling stations, affecting 12 per cent of those voters observed."
Their report was referred to in Reform UK leader Nigel Farage's reaction to the result.
Mr Farage called Spencer's win as a "victory for sectarian voting and cheating".
But in response to the accusation, a Greens spokesperson said: "This is an attempt to undermine the democratic result and is straight out of the Trump playbook.
"We’ve just won a historic by-election by a comfortable margin. We’ve shown the country that Greens can beat Reform, despite their big business donations."
Manchester City Council said it had not received any reports of family voting at polling stations.
A spokesperson said: "Polling station staff are trained to look out for any evidence of undue influence on voters. No such issues have been reported today.
"If Democracy Volunteers were so concerned about alleged issues, they could and should have raised them with us during polling hours so that immediate action could be taken.
"We have operated a central by-election hub which has been rapidly responding to reported issues during the day, in liaison with the police - who had a presence at every polling station - where necessary.
"It is extremely disappointing that Democracy Volunteers have waited until after polls have closed to make such claims."
It is unclear whether Tameside Council, which also helped run the vote, have received any reports of electoral breaches.
In a tweet, Farage added: "Matt Goodwin was a great candidate for us. Roll on the elections on May 7th.
"It will be goodbye Starmer and goodbye to the Tory party."
In her maiden speech, Spencer took aim at what she suggested was a billionaire class bleeding the working class dry.
She said: "We are being bled dry, and I don't think it's extreme or radical to think that working hard should get you a nice life."
Spencer added: "We are sick of our hard work making other people rich."
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In a message to her constituents, she said: "I will earn your trust."
In an apparent jibe at Reform, she said: "My Muslim friends and neighbours are just like me.
"The cracks that have started to show can be healed."
"We don't have to accept being turned against each other at all. We did this with the people who live here. Shoulder-to-shoulder. This is Manchester and we do things differently here."
The turnout was virtually the same as the 2024 General Election at 47.6 per cent - in a break from the usually low totals at by-elections.
The build-up to the campaign was dominated by the blocking of Andy Burnham's attempt to stand as Labour's candidate by the party's National Executive Committee.
The NEC voted 8-1 to block the Mayor of Greater Manchester from standing - the lone dissenting voice being Deputy Leader Lucy Powell MP.