Around 2.6 million have signed in total

More than 100,000 people from Greater Manchester constituencies have signed the petition on Parliament’s website calling for the holding of another General Election, the Manchester Evening News can reveal.

The constituency in Wigan of Leigh and Atherton – which went back to Labour in July from the Conservatives – has polled the most signatories, with the number of names currently standing at 5,098.

Interest in another General Election appears to be at its lowest in the Manchester constituency of Rusholme – with 1,039 signatories on the petition. The seat was a comfortable Labour hold at the General Election.

The 27 constituencies covering the Greater Manchester area have, of course, differing sizes and electorates, but all but two are now held by Labour Party MPs after the Tories were wiped from the political map here. The Liberal Democrats hold Cheadle and Hazel Grove. In the constituency of the Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner, Ashton-under-Lyne, almost 4,000 people have signed the petition.

After 14 years in opposition, the Labour party headed by Sir Keir Starmer swept into power in July with a majority just shy of what Tony Blair achieved in 1997.

Analysis by the M.E.N. of the constituencies where voters are most likely to have signed the petition calling for another General Election are overwhelmingly Tory and Reform sets.

The figures show the total number of signatories in the Greater Manchester constituencies to be 108,240. Around 2.6 million people have signed a parliamentary petition calling for a new general election nationally – at the time of writing.

Any official petition that reaches 100,000 signatures has to be considered before Parliament, but with Labour having won a sizeable majority in July, it’s extremely unlikely that they would call another general election.

Asked about the petition on ITV’s This Morning, the Prime Minister ruled out calls for another election by saying that it is ‘not how our system works’. Sir Keir said: “There will be plenty of people who didn’t want us in the first place…my focus is on the decisions that I have to make every day.”

The petition was widely circulated over the weekend on social media site, X. One of those sharing the petition was the site’s billionaire owner, Elon Musk. It prompted speculation that many of the signatures on the petition may have come from people overseas.

It’s hard to tell from the publicly available data exactly how many of the signatures on the petition have been made by people who aren’t eligible to vote in this country. The petition site does have an option for people to say they’re filling it in from overseas, but people could give a UK address if they want.

According to the official figures though, more than 99 per cent of the signatures on the petition were made in the UK. Almost 20,000 people gave an overseas location, with signatures coming in from almost every country in the world, including from places such as China, the USA, Russia and even North Korea.

Australia has more signatures on the petition than any other country outside the UK, with 2,831. That’s followed by Spain with 2,034, the United States with 1,594, France with 1,497 and Canada with 1,015.

The number of signatories for each Greater Manchester constituency are below:

Bolton West – 4,895.

Bolton North East – 4,843.

Bolton South and Walkden – 3,855.

Wigan – 5,260.

Makerfield 5,098.

Leigh and Atherton – 5,292.

Worlsey and Eccles – 4,750.

Stretford and Urmston – 3,328.

Wythenshawe and Sale East – 3,936.

Cheadle – 4,060.

Stockport – 3,400.

Gorton and Denton – 2,790.

Manchester Withington – 1,469.

Manchester Rusholme – 1,039.

Manchester Central – 3,536.

Blackley and Middleton South – 3,275.

Salford – 4,157..

Bury South – 4,836.

Bury North – 4,308.

Heywood and Middleton North – 4,577.

Rochdale -3,431.

Oldham East and Saddleworth – 4,543.

Oldham West, Chadderton and Royton – 3,555

Altrincham and Sale West – 4,897.

Stalybridge and Hyde – 4,681.

Hazel Grove – 4,430.

Ashton under Lyne – 3,999.

Under the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Act 2022, the prime minister has the power to call an election at any time during the five-year length of a parliamentary session.

If no election is called before then, parliament is automatically dissolved five years after the day it first met. That means if no snap election is called between then, the date of the next general election would be summer 2029.

The petition reads: “I would like there to be another general election. I believe the current Labour Government have gone back on the promises they laid out in the lead-up to the last election.” It is open for signatures until May,

2025.

Although it has garnered media attention, it is far from the largest petition received through the Parliament website, or the one which has seen the most rapid take-up. In 2019, some 6.1 million people signed a petition calling for the revocation of Article 50 and for the United Kingdom to remain in the European Union, four million of whom did so in 48 hours.

The second most-signed petition gained 4.1 million signatures – a 2016 petition calling for a second referendum on the UK’s membership of the European Union following the Brexit vote.

But because the election petition has received 10,000 signatures, ministers will issue a response to it. MPs may consider it further in a Westminster Hall debate because it has been signed by more than 100,000 people, although this is not guaranteed.