Woking.

Woking is a single-town seat in the South East, built around the commuter town of Woking itself, which holds roughly seven in ten of the constituency's 103,920 residents. Beyond the main town sit the smaller settlements of New Haw, West Byfleet and Sheerwater, then Byfleet, with a thin scatter of villages including Brookwood and dispersed rural fringes. It is a relatively prosperous and well-qualified area: the median age is 40, nearly half of adults hold a degree, and the population is around four-fifths White. Local services are run by a single body, Woking Borough Council, a district authority drawing all ten of its wards in this seat from the town and its immediate suburbs.

That singular geography is matched by a singular recent politics. Across the eleven most-recent ward contests, the Liberal Democrats took ten and an independent the other, and on the figures available the party now appears comfortably ascendant at the local level. The same shift registered at Westminster: in 2024 the Liberal Democrats won the seat on 49.9%, well clear of the Conservatives on 26.5%, having trailed them only five years earlier when the Conservatives held it on 48.9%. Will Forster, elected for the Liberal Democrats in 2024, is the sitting member, and has spoken most on local government, the economy and social care.

The direction of travel, then, runs firmly toward the Liberal Democrats, who have converted ward dominance into a substantial parliamentary margin within a single cycle. Recent local coverage has had a sober, administrative character, tending to dwell on the council's finances and the wider reorganisation of local government across Surrey rather than on party contest. On the figures available the seat looks settled rather than closely contested, though a recovering council balance sheet leaves the local backdrop unusually exposed.