Godalming & Ash.

Godalming and Ash is a prosperous, ageing corner of west Surrey, with a median age of 45 and more than two in five residents degree-educated. No single town dominates: Ash and Ash Vale is the largest settlement at around 20,000 people, but Farncombe, Cranleigh and Godalming each hold roughly 11,000 to 12,000, and a further sixth of the seat lives in rural and dispersed communities. The result is a network of small towns and villages rather than an urban centre. Local services are split between two district authorities, Waverley, which holds thirteen of the seat's wards, and Guildford, which holds three.

That two-council geography is mirrored in a divided politics. Across the thirty-one most recent ward contests, the Liberal Democrats have been the clear winners, taking seventeen to the Conservatives' ten, with the remainder spread across Labour, the Greens and an independent; most of those Waverley results date from 2023. The parliamentary picture is finer-grained. At the 2024 general election, the first fought on these boundaries, the Conservatives held the seat on 42.6 per cent against 41.0 for the Liberal Democrats -- a margin of under two points. Jeremy Hunt, the sitting Conservative and the seat's MP under its predecessor since 2005, retained it on that slender lead.

The seat therefore looks contested rather than settled: a narrow Conservative hold at Westminster sits atop a local map that has tilted towards the Liberal Democrats. Recent local coverage has had a markedly administrative and transitional character, dominated by the looming reorganisation of Surrey's councils and the practical questions that surround it. With the district tier facing abolition and ward control already drifting, the gap between the seat's parliamentary result and its council arithmetic appears to be the defining feature of its direction of travel.