Two-thirds of Labour members are optimistic about the party’s chances of winning the upcoming Holborn and St. Pancras by-election, exclusive polling for LabourList reveals.

The poll, conducted by Survation, found that 65 percent of members believe Labour’s Sagal Abdi-Wali will be the winner of the by-election, taking place next Thursday, compared to 20 percent who believe Green leader Zack Polanski will be elected.

The by-election was triggered by former Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s decision to stand down from his parliamentary seat. 

The Green Party are strongly targeting the seat following their first parliamentary by-election win in Gorton and Denton in February and strong results in local elections in London in May.

Some 70 percent of members living in London are confident of a Labour win next week, with men more inclined to believe the party will hold the seat compared to women (at 73 percent to 55 percent respectively).

More than two-thirds of members who voted for Keir Starmer (67 percent) or Lisa Nandy (71 percent) in 2020’s Labour leadership election think Abdi-Wali will win.

However, this number drops to just over half of members who voted for Rebecca Long Bailey, at 51 percent.

Just over a third (37 percent) of Long Bailey voters believe Polanski will win the seat, compared with 18 per cent of Starmer’s 2020 leadership supporters and 13 percent of Nandy’s.

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Two thirds (67 percent) of members state that they feel optimistic about Labour’s electoral chances in the by-election, compared to just over a quarter (26 percent) who feel pessimistic.

Abdi-Wali is the leader of Camden Council, which encompasses the Holborn and St Pancras constituency. The councillor grew up in Camden after coming to Britain in the early 1990s as a child refugee, fleeing civil war in Somalia.

She became Camden’s first black female council leader following May’s local election results. 

The by-election is the seventh of the parliament, with two of the last three contests in Labour-held seats being lost to the Greens and Reform respectively.

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The by-election was called following Sir Keir Starmer’s announcement that he felt it was “the right time” to stand down as a sitting member of Parliament.

This announcement was received as controversial by some within the Labour Party, as Starmer had previously said he would serve out the rest of his term as a constituency MP after he resigned as Prime Minister. 

Polling of the Labour membership shows a close split across the party as to whether Starmer made the right or wrong decision by resigning from his Parliamentary seat.

Some 41 percent of members believe the former Prime Minister was right to stand down as an MP, but 46 per cent of members believe it was the wrong decision. Just over one in ten (13 percent) say they do not know either way.

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Survation, a member of the British Polling Council and a Market Research Society Partner, surveyed 1,073 readers of LabourList who also said they were Labour Party members between September 19 and 22.

Data was weighted to the profile of Labour Party Members. Data were weighted by region, sex, age group and 2025 deputy leadership vote. Targets for weighting were drawn from the British Election Study and the result of the 2025 deputy leadership election.