Has Reform’s support peaked? Not even close

When Sarah Pochin became Nigel Farage’s fifth MP after the Runcorn by-election on May 1, the Reform leader had every reason to be buoyant.

With news emerging that his party’s council candidates had also gained hundreds of seats from the Tories and Labour, Farage told a rally of supporters that the elections marked “the beginning of the end of the Conservative Party”. Reform, he said, “are now the main opposition party to this Government”. Since then, a series of polls have suggested that they might turn from unofficial opposition to the party of government after the next general election.

But after a series of rows over controversial remarks by Pochin, two disappointing election results and a bruising few weeks in the media, the question being asked across Westminster is whether Reform has “plateaued” with voters. Those asking the question tend to think the answer is “yes”. But what’s the truth?

Ahead of the competition

Right now, Reform have a comfortable poll lead. Research platforms such as YouGov, who usually rate Reform lower than other pollsters, currently have them at 27 per cent; Find Out Now, who usually rate them higher than others, have Reform at 30 per cent; and Ipsos had them at 33 per cent in November (we await their new figures).

Meanwhile, these same pollsters currently put the Conservatives between 16 and 20 per cent, Labour between 14 and 19 per cent, the Greens between 15 and 18 per cent, and the Lib Dems between 12 and 14 per cent. Reform are therefore well ahead of the competition, currently on track to become at least the largest party in Parliament after the next election.

It’s true Reform have dropped a little in the last few months, from a remarkable high of 29 per cent in September, according to YouGov, which marked a rise of 14 percentage points since July 2024. This is surely down to a mix of bad coverage, poorly thought-through policy announcements and, perhaps, some voter fatigue as a result of the party remaining so dominant in the media. That has led to an assumption among Reform sceptics that the party has hit its natural ceiling of around 30 per cent and can’t go higher because the remaining electorate dislikes Farage and populist politics.

But for all Reform’s problems – which are arguably much less significant than those of Labour or the Tories – a detailed look at the opinion research simply doesn’t imply they’ve reached their ceiling. On the contrary, I’d put Reform’s ceiling significantly higher than their current 30 per cent – and much closer to 40 per cent.

I’m not predicting Reform will hit 40 per cent. Rather, I’m suggesting there are significantly more voters out there who would choose Reform in different circumstances. I’m further suggesting it’s plausible these different circumstances will emerge before the next election. With this effective “cushion”, they can survive more than a little bad coverage, as we’re currently seeing.

Nationwide appeal

Reform sceptics currently have three main talking points. First, that Reform has underperformed in recent elections. They failed to win the Westminster parliamentary by-election in Caerphilly, which some expected them to. Meanwhile, they were pipped to the post in a council by-election in Hendon, which the Tories held. This was seen as significant because the Conservative Party threw their highest-profile politicians into the local campaign – including Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick – and managed to hold on to the seat.

This point is daft; in both elections, Reform came from nowhere to challenge parties that had held the seats for years. The fact they came close – in rural Wales (won by nationalists from Labour) and metropolitan London – showed they’re the only party that can genuinely challenge for seats all over the country. Every other party is locked out of at least some parts of Britain, but not Reform.

Second, sceptics argue the party is inherently vulnerable to risk because of the nature of its politicians and candidates – who are reliably eccentric, outspoken and certainly on the edges of mainstream politics. Pochin’s recent ramblings about diversity on TV – denounced by Farage as “ugly” – are a case in point. Just last week, one of their council leaders in Staffordshire stood down after Reform launched an internal investigation into social media posts.

As former Tory adviser James Starkie said last week, though, Reform hardly have a monopoly on eccentricity or political stupidity. Look at Rachel Reeves’s and Angela Rayner’s problems with their financial affairs and their badly crafted defences. Politicians are human, and humans do stupid things, regardless of their party brand.

Scepticism about Reform’s chances of maintaining the levels of success seen earlier this year has also been fuelled by the torrid few weeks that Farage has personally undergone in the media.

First, Farage faced claims from 28 former pupils at his old school, Dulwich College, that he used racist and offensive language there (Farage has said he didn’t directly abuse anyone, but engaged in general banter). Then claims emerged from a former worker on Farage’s successful campaign to take his Clacton seat that the campaign illegally overspent (which Reform denies).

Both rows matter to Reform’s fortunes because Farage is the absolute face of the party; while the Tories and Labour have other senior political figures who are reasonably well known to the country, as well as long histories of political action, Reform currently only has Farage. If he is damaged, the party is disproportionately damaged.

It’s reasonable to assume all the bad coverage has had some impact; media coverage on a large scale matters. However, so far, there are no signs this poses a genuinely serious threat. YouGov’s most recent poll – which put Reform up a point to 27 – was conducted after all this negative coverage.

Furthermore, in qualitative research among older, working-class voters this week, opinion research agency Public First, which I used to chair, found that nobody mentioned unprompted Farage’s alleged behaviour at school, and when it was brought up people mostly wrote it off as teenage stupidity. (Incidentally, a recent YouGov poll showed far more people think Reform is pro- rather than anti-Israel, which might explain why allegations of anti-Semitic language at school haven’t gained much traction.)

The Farage factor

There’s scepticism about Reform’s chances of further ascent because Farage has been around for so long and has very high personal unfavourability ratings. It’s on this point that sceptics primarily base their argument that Reform’s natural ceiling in the polls is around 30 per cent, because, again, Farage is Reform and Reform is Farage.

There’s an idea that voters know him so well that everyone has a view on him; he can’t surprise anyone or convince any undecideds because there aren’t any. This is the argument that is most plausible and would be most damaging to their long-term prospects, and it’s the one that deserves most attention.

I have been conducting research on Farage for many years. In that time, there’s often been a complete misunderstanding of his attraction to voters – particularly by those opposed to his politics.

Farage has never, ever been truly popular with voters; he’s no folk hero. In focus groups down the years, many people expressed support for Tony Blair, David Cameron and (briefly) Boris Johnson when these men were party leaders, and all three had significant personal followings at the polls. People talked positively about their characters and values and voted for them on that basis.

Nigel Farage never had this. In focus groups, most people rolled their eyes at his name or sighed; some expressed brutal hostility. (Even among working-class voters who express a desire for a “British version of Trump” who “gets the job done”, Farage isn’t seen as the obvious answer.)

Recent polling adds context. At the end of November, YouGov asked a series of personal questions about Farage. By 59 per cent to 26 per cent, respondents agreed that he does not “understand people like you”; by 45 per cent to 30 per cent, more agreed than disagreed that he “is a racist”; and by 61 per cent to 21 per cent, they agreed he would not “make a good prime minister”. Furthermore, by 51 per cent to 30 per cent (with the remainder answering “don’t know”), they agreed that he does not have a clear plan for the country.

It is not, however, Farage’s personal appeal that would propel Reform into government. Far more significant is the fact that, at this point, voters agree with the most important of his policy positions – above all on immigration, but also on crime and, to some extent, on “woke”.

It’s the policies, stupid

Too many political commentators assume Britain is like America, and that voters are choosing “leaders” in general elections, where character and values matter most. But we have a fundamentally different political system from the US, and different challenges. Unfashionable though it may be to say so, people in Britain vote largely on what parties say about key policies.

To state the obvious, many people like Farage’s policies – or, more accurately, they like a small number of them and tolerate (or have not heard of) the rest. A YouGov poll in November showed that voters believed, by a huge margin, that Reform would best handle asylum and immigration: 38 per cent said Reform, compared with just 7 per cent for the Conservatives and 9 per cent for Labour. Reform was also the top choice on law and order.

But there is also a broader sense that Reform would deliver the change so many voters are desperate for. In November, Ipsos found that Reform topped the list of parties seen as likely to “deliver the kind of change you think Britain needs”. Among the half of voters who said Britain requires radical change, Reform was by far the most popular choice. This is partly because its policies and rhetoric deliberately set it apart from the mainstream parties.

Those who talk of Farage’s sky-high negatives also tend to ignore the appalling ratings of other party leaders. Recent polling by Ipsos found that, yes, Farage’s personal ratings were poor: by 52 per cent to 31 per cent, voters said they were dissatisfied with the way he was running Reform.

But these negatives were dwarfed by those of others. By a massive 79 per cent to 13 per cent, voters were dissatisfied with the way Keir Starmer was doing his job as Prime Minister, and by 58 per cent to 17 per cent, they were dissatisfied with the way Kemi Badenoch was leading the Conservative Party.

In a world where everyone is perceived to be failing, Farage’s ratings really are not that bad. And in a world where people are desperate for action on issues like immigration and crime, Farage’s historic positions on those issues are a huge plus.

In the summer, the opinion research firm Public First published some analysis of Reform’s theoretical coalition. The poll is a few months old now – and Labour’s polling position has deteriorated since then – but the fundamentals are the same, and the bulk of the analysis remains relevant.

Roughly a third of voters said they viewed Reform and Farage unfavourably. These are voters who would never vote for Reform in the future. The most hostile to Farage were – as you would expect – centre-Left, middle-class, southern voters, particularly those planning to vote Lib Dem or Green. The least hostile, politically, were 2024 Conservative voters and those planning to vote Conservative next time.

In theory, with only a third of voters truly hostile to Farage, this would leave a natural polling ceiling closer to 60 per cent. This, however, is clearly unrealistic. While some voters may not view Reform or Farage unfavourably, they may simply have always voted for a different party, or prefer one. Many, too, do not vote at all: turnout at the last general election was under 60 per cent.

For likely voters, you need to look at those who have a favourable view of Farage or Reform but do not currently vote for them. Back in the summer, 24 per cent of those planning to vote Conservative at the next election were favourable to Farage, as were 19 per cent of those planning to vote Labour. You could therefore reasonably assume that Reform might take around a quarter of those planning to vote Conservative; given that the Tories are in a similar position in the polls now, this broadly holds.

Making assumptions about voters’ future behaviour is unbelievably difficult; there is little real “science” in it. But taken together, this suggests it is reasonable for Reform to aim for a polling position of around 40 per cent. They will almost certainly not reach it, but that does mean that those suggesting Reform has “plateaued” are engaging in wishful thinking.

The path to Number 10

What can Reform do to increase its vote share? Tory voters must be its priority; they offer the easiest way to add a few points. Reform must continue to undermine the Tories. If the Conservatives are at roughly 20 per cent in the polls now, how many will stay the course if they think that, by doing so, they’ll let a Left-wing coalition win the next election?

Just as the Conservatives persuaded many prospective Reform (or Ukip) voters that a vote for Farage was effectively a vote for Labour by splitting the Right-leaning vote, so Reform would benefit from saying the same about the Tories.

That means continuing to welcome defections by high-profile former Tories who express an interest in joining Reform. There have been regular rumours about Suella Braverman, the former home secretary, defecting, amongst others. If Farage can swing that, it could be a game-changer.

Reform should also start recruiting well-regarded former Tory staffers who have been in government and know how to handle the massive challenges that power throws up. Reform should also attack the Tories on policy just as much as Labour, as Farage did in this newspaper after the Budget: anything to make Tory loyalists think, “Why bother sticking with them?”

It won’t, however, be enough just to recruit better-quality Tories. They need to ensure their policies attract Tories too, without alienating other parts of their coalition. Above all, that means toughening up on welfare.

In the summer, Nigel Farage inexplicably committed Reform to backing the abolition of the two-child benefit cap. This was a popular policy introduced by the Conservatives to discourage people from having children they could not possibly afford to support.

This was exactly the sort of Tory policy that hard-working, welfare-sceptic Tory and Reform activists supported. Farage’s move against it was supposedly to support a higher British birthrate that would negate the need for further immigration, and he went on to clarify that he wanted the cap lifted only for British citizens in work. However, the damage was done: when Rachel Reeves’s Budget removed the cap, provoking widespread voter fury about a “Budget for Benefits Street” (in Badenoch’s words), Reform were mere spectators in a Budget they struggled to denounce effectively.

Reform must also ensure their vision for the country is “made in Britain” – that their policy platform and the articulation of their values is British to the point of parochial. Looking Trump-obsessed will play badly with all voters, including Tories. That means limiting their events with Right-wing Republican politicians and donors, dumping the Maga “merch”, and steering away from niche policies like crypto, which many Americans love but which just sound odd to British ears.

Meanwhile, they will need to extensively vet all future candidates to weed out the extreme and incompetent; kick out any existing politicians and activists who cross the line of decency; and rapidly unveil these great future cabinet members that Farage assures us are preparing to come over to the party.

Mainstream parties sidelined

Those suggesting Reform have plateaued would be better off asking whether Labour and the Conservatives have themselves. After all, Reform have really only risen because of the undeniable failures of the established parties – failures that have led to many people saying “never again” to mainstream politics.

Perhaps Reform did once have a ceiling of 20 per cent, when it looked like the Conservatives had a masterplan to send asylum seekers to have their claims processed in Rwanda; perhaps they had a ceiling of 30 per cent when it looked like Labour might stop the boats by “smashing the gangs”. But in the context of endless, serious political failure, their ceiling keeps rising and the established parties’ ceilings keep falling.

To put their polling performance into perspective, YouGov’s “MRP” poll in September – which uses modelling from large-scale polling to make detailed seat projections – put Reform on a national vote share of 27 per cent. This would have amounted to 311 seats, just shy of a majority, with Labour on 144 seats and the Conservatives facing almost total wipeout with 45 seats. Labour’s poll ratings have deteriorated since then, so even though Reform have had a rocky period, they are still in a strong position.

It’s difficult to imagine that Reform’s ratings will rise much higher in the near term and, personally, I still find the idea of a Reform majority hard to imagine (we’ll see). But their 40 per cent ceiling means they can weather political storms in the coming months and years; it means that, in the end, they’ll be able to form a coalition with what’s left of the Conservative Party.

Those Reform sceptics who seem to think the party is a flash in the pan – and that normal political service will be restored shortly – are in for a nasty surprise.