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Hello, here is your latest helping of by-election cast, where we zoom in on the constituency

of Makerfield, where voters will be going to the polls on the 18th of June.

And actually, cycling into the newscast studio today, I bumped into my friend's little sister,

whose birthday is on the 18th of June. And she was not aware that

there was three by-elections happening that day. But she is now, and hopefully she is listening to

this episode of By-Election cast. Oh, and by the way, if you'd like to come and see Newscast being

done live at the Edinburgh Festival, we're going to be there from the 10th to the 14th of August. There are still some tickets available, although they are going like hotcakes. So go to edfringe.com, click on shows, search for newscast, and then you'll get the instructions for how you can get a ticket to come and see us in Edinburgh. But right now, we're thinking of the northwest of England,

just beyond Manchester, just beyond Wiggin, and we're heading to Makerfield.

Newscast from the BBC. The political circus is coming to town. The Makerfield has given

one heck of a responsibility. We're in this sort of holding pattern until that by-election. I don't remember a by-election like that. Every man and his dog's going to be there. The most important by-election contest in the past 50 years. Makerfield, blimey. Hello, it's Adam in the newscast studio, bi-election cast studio, and I'm joined by Lara Spirit, who's the deputy political editor of the Sunday Times. Hello, Laura.

Hello. Hello.

Also on the line is Luke Trill from the pollsters more in common. Hello, Luke. Hi. And welcome to by-election cast, Annabelle Tiffin, who's the BBC's political editor in the Northwest. Hello, Annabelle. Hello. Although, Annabel, your whole patch, which covers a lot of constituencies and a lot of important people, I feel, has probably like zoomed in on one particular bit in the last week or so. Yeah. Makerfield, which, you know, if I'm absolutely honest, I am the political list of the Northwest, but I hadn't really been to Maker Field. Well, it isn't actually a place, to be fair. Yeah, no's been to Makerfield because it doesn't exist. Nobody's been to Makerfield. It's a suffix. It's basically from Ashton in Makerfield and Inns in Makerfield. But yeah, so there's no such place as Makerfield. So if you are hoping to visit it, you can't. The nearest is Ashton in Makerfield. But we hadn't really paid that much attention to it until now because it was such a safe red wall seat. Also, we thought, obviously, at the 2024 election, it wasn't so much. But it's never been one that's been necessarily on our radar, but it suddenly is now. Pinging away on the radar. Lara, you were there for the Sunday Times recently. I was going to say what was the temperature, but I mean, the temperature was high everywhere this week. I meant sort of metaphorically.

Oh, sorry, so politically not, yep.

Politically, really interesting, very hard to find anybody who hadn't spoken to a journalist before, for example, particularly if they were in place. So if they were running a local shop, for example, they would sort of sigh heavily when you came in. And I was going, I should remind you, like last week. So early days of the campaign, already they had been met by a number of people asking them what they think. I mean, when Luke and I did a focus group, or rather, Luke did a focus group that I joined, it was interesting that a number of the residents of the constituency were saying, it's kind of difficult because we've got a big regeneration project at the moment. And you do notice it when I was walking down the street, really, really noisy, tons going on, particularly in Ashton and Makerfield. So it's certainly a busy time to be there. But yeah, very hard pressed to find anybody who isn't aware of the politics of this. But, you know, I spoke to one lovely woman who runs a shop and she was quite distressed by the amount of journalists that were talking. She was saying, I'm just worried it's deterring people from coming into my shop at this point because it's just, it's become, you know, such a hotly watched place at such an interesting time. And Luke, Lara,

referred to it there. You've done a focus group in the patch. You're about to go and do a virtual one just now after we finish recording, I think. And also we've had some, we've had one opinion

poll. So we're starting to get some kind of some data of different, different forms.

We are. And if the data is confirming anything,

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