Nigel Farage was hit with a fresh blow this morning as a major new poll showed Reform has hit its lowest level of support in nine months. YouGov’s latest survey for The Times and Sky News uncovered that Reform is down two points, to just 24%.
This is well down on the party’s peak last summer of around 31%, and suggests voters are returning to the Tories and Labour. The Conservatives once again were in second place, up one point to 20%. Labour were again in third, but up two points to 19%.
The LibDems and Greens have 16% and 14% respectively.
YouGov noted that the survey was conducted before yesterday’s defection of former Tory chancellor Nadhim Zahawi, which had mixed reactions from Reform supporters and commentators.
At 24% support it’s the lowest level of support recorded for Reform since last April.
Fellow pollster at Ipsos Keiran Pedley said: “This is all basically margin of error stuff from a pollster that had typically had lower Reform leads. So that context matters. Need other polls.
“That said, if this was the true state of play Labour will fancy the next election.”
According to the Electoral Calculus website, the poll would see Reform fall 44 seats short of an overall majority.
Mr Farage would command the largest party in the Commons, with 282 seats.
However Labour would be decimated down to just 122 seats, and the Tories on 78.
Yesterday’s defection of Nadhim Zahawi was criticised by some Reform supporters, who objected to yet another ex-Tory jumping ship to a party supposedly set up to clean up their mess.
Mr Zahawi said he and his party have to take responsibility for many of the problems facing Britain, and Nigel Farage is the man to fix it.
Today’s YouGov poll, however, is an outlier. The Spectator’s average poll tracker still has Reform on 31%, with the Tories on 18% and Labour on 17%.
