Survey reveals the exact demographics behind Reform's growing support

Independent

a day ago

Recent voting intention polling from YouGov (May 27) shows Reform UK in first place, 8% ahead of Labour and 10% ahead of the Conservatives, who are now in third place.
The rising popularity of Nigel Farage 's party is an unprecedented threat to the major parties. This was driven home in recent local elections in England, where Reform won 677 seats and took control of 10 local authorities. But where does this support come from?
The survey compares respondent voting intention to their votes in the 2024 general election.
If we look at Conservative voters, 27% of them have switched to Reform in their voting intentions, while 66% remain loyal. Alarmingly for Labour, only 60% of their 2024 voters have remained loyal, and 15% intend to vote for Reform, while 12% switched to the Liberal Democrats and 9% to the Greens.
Labour has been squeezed from both sides of the political spectrum, but the loss to the left is significantly larger than the loss to the right.
In contrast, 73% of Liberal Democrat voters have remained loyal to the party, with only 7% switching to Reform and 8% going to Labour. Not surprisingly, 91% of Reform voters have remained loyal, with 5% going to the Conservatives and 3% going to the Greens. None of the Reform voters have switched to Labour or the Liberal Democrats.
Reform's rise has led the Labour government to take more hardline stances on key issues, particularly immigration and asylum – which around half of YouGov respondents say is the most important issue facing the country.
And with small boat crossings on the rise again, it remains to be seen whether the government's recent proposals to reduce net migration will be enough to hold onto wavering supporters.
Social backgrounds and party support
If we probe a bit further into the social characteristics of voters, only 8% of 18 to 24-year-olds support Reform, compared with 35% of 50 to 64-year-olds and 33% of the over-65s. Some 34% of the younger group support Labour, 12% the Conservatives, 15% the Liberal Democrats and 25% the Greens.
As far as the 50 to 64-year-olds are concerned, 19% support Labour, 16% the Conservatives, 16% the Liberal Democrats and 9% the Greens. There is currently a significant age divide when it comes to party support.
With respect to class (or 'social grade' as it is described in contemporary surveys), 23% of the middle-class support Reform compared with 38% of the working class. The latter were the bedrock of Labour support a couple of generations ago, but now only 19% support Labour, with 17% supporting the Conservatives and 12% the Liberal Democrats.
Current support for the parties among middle-class voters, apart from Reform, is 22% for Labour, 21% for the Conservatives and 17% for the Liberal Democrats. Again, the middle class used to be the key supporters of the Conservative party, but at the moment the party is running third behind its rivals in this group.
Finally, the relationship between gender and support for the parties is also interesting. Some 35% of male respondents support Reform compared with only 24% of female respondents.
In contrast, 21% of both men and women support Labour. The figures for the Conservatives are 16% of men and 22% of women, and Liberal Democrat support is 14% from men and 16% from women.
There is also notable support for Reform among those who voted Leave in the 2016 Brexit referendum in the YouGov survey. Altogether 53% of Leave voters in the EU Referendum opted for Reform and 24% supported the Conservatives, with 8% supporting Labour, 8% the Liberal Democrats and 4% the Greens. In the case of Remain voters, 10% chose Reform, 17% went for the Conservatives, 30% for Labour, 23% for the Liberal Democrats and 14% for the Greens.
Not surprisingly, Reform takes the largest share of Brexit voters, but just over half of them – indicating that a lot of change has occurred in support since the 2016 referendum and Farage's role in the Leave campaign. The fact that 10% of Remain voters switched to Reform and 20% of Leave voters have switched to Labour, the Liberal Democrats or the Greens shows that it is not just a simple case of support for Brexit leading to support for Reform.
Voting and volatility
Before Nigel Farage starts picking out curtains for Number 10, it is worth looking at another volatile moment in British political history - the effects of the split in the Labour party in 1981, when the Social Democratic Party was formed by the 'gang of four' breakaway Labour politicians, Shirley Williams, Roy Jenkins, David Owen and Bill Rodgers.
The newly formed party agreed to an electoral pact with the Liberals, which continued until the 1983 election. A Gallup poll published in December 1981 shows a massive lead for the SDP-Liberal Alliance.
And yet, Margaret Thatcher's Conservatives won that election. Labour came second by a small margin ahead of the SDP-Liberal Alliance and remained the main opposition party.
The point of this example is that a massive lead in the polls for the SDP-Liberal Alliance shortly after it was established did not provide a breakthrough in the general election two years later. Reform may be in the lead now, but this does not mean that it will win the general election of 2028-29.
That said, there is a real risk for Labour continuing to lose support to both the left and the right – something which it needs to rapidly repair. Rachel Reeves 's 'iron chancellor' strategy, in which the government announces fiscal rules which it claims to stand by at all costs, is no longer credible.
As the Institute of Government points out, every single fiscal rule adopted since 2008 has subsequently been abandoned. A strategy of continuing austerity by making significant cuts in the welfare budget to calm financial markets is likely to fail, both in the economy and with voters.
Paul Whiteley is a Professor in the Department of Government at the University of Essex.