Reform on course to win next election

Telegraph

4 hours ago

Reform UK is now on course to win an outright majority at the next general election, a new poll suggests, with more than a third of voters saying they intend to back Nigel Farage's party.
The Ipsos opinion poll puts Reform on 34 per cent, nine points ahead of Labour on 25 per cent, with the Conservatives a distant third on 15 per cent.
It is the highest level of support for Reform shown by any poll to date, and would almost certainly be sufficient to give Mr Farage a comfortable overall majority in Parliament. Mr Farage told The Telegraph: 'This poll shows Reform can and will win the next general election.'
Analysis by The Telegraph suggests that if the poll result was reproduced in the 2029 election, Reform could win in excess of 400 seats, giving the party a majority of almost 200 and making Mr Farage prime minister. The Tories could be reduced to fewer than 10 seats with Labour on around 140, losing some 270 of the seats they currently hold.
However, national opinion polls are notoriously difficult to translate into seat numbers because voting percentages in individual constituencies can vary hugely from the overall average.
The poll contains further evidence of the collapse in support for Labour, which is now at levels not seen since October 2019, when Boris Johnson was at the height of his popularity.
Sir Keir Starmer is shown to be the least popular prime minister at this stage of his term in office since Ipsos began compiling such records almost half a century ago. Just 19 per cent of respondents said they were satisfied with the job he is doing, with 73 per cent dissatisfied.
Only Gordon Brown (22 per cent satisfied) has come close to such levels of unpopularity after 11 months in office. For comparison, 68 per cent of people were satisfied with Sir Tony Blair at the same stage, while Sir John Major satisfied 54 per cent of people and Baroness Thatcher 43 per cent.
The news is no better for the Tories, whose support, at 15 per cent, is the lowest since Ipsos's records began in 1976. Just 29 per cent of 2024 voters are satisfied with the job Tory leader Kemi Badenoch is doing, a figure which drops to 11 per cent when all voters are taken into account.
The Ipsos survey of 1,180 people reflected the growing likelihood that Reform will be helped by a splintering of the vote among other parties, with the LibDems taking 11 per cent of the votes and the Greens 9 per cent, suggesting that other parties will struggle to win many seats.
A Reform UK source said: 'This is big Reform majority territory.'
Both the Conservatives and Labour have lost the support of half of those who voted for them in 2024, with the Tories losing 48 per cent of their voters and Labour 54 per cent.
Most of the Tory defectors (37 per cent of the 2024 total) have switched to Reform, while Labour has lost 12 per cent of its 2024 vote to Reform and another 13 per cent split between the LibDems and Greens.
In contrast, Reform has retained the backing of 95 per cent of those who voted for the party last year.
Gideon Skinner, senior director of UK politics at Ipsos, said: 'The last year has indeed been a long time in politics, with our first voting intention poll since the election showing just how much the political landscape has transformed since then.
'Reform UK has continued to build on its success, helped by high levels of enthusiasm among its own support and among working class voters in particular, and taking votes from both Labour and especially the Conservatives, who show little sign of recovery.'
He added: 'The disappointment with Labour is clear, even among those who voted for the party in 2024.
'We know from Ipsos research how difficult it has been to shift entrenched public pessimism over the cost of living, immigration, and the state of public services, and so far, Britons do not think Labour is delivering the tangible change they were hoping for in 2024.
'This is reflected in satisfaction ratings for the Government and Prime Minister that are well below the average we usually see coming up to a one-year anniversary. Indeed, they look remarkably similar to the poor ratings received by Gordon Brown in 2008 after the financial crash.'
Surveys were carried out between May 29 and June 4, before Zia Yusuf resigned as Reform's chairman and subsequently returned to the party, and before Rachel Reeves announced her controversial spending review.
The poll marks the relaunch of Ipsos's Political Monitor survey, which uses an online panel of voters selected using random probability sampling.
Letters are sent to randomly selected addresses inviting the recipients to join an online panel, and the results from those who agree to take part are adjusted to take account of the adult population profile on age, gender, ethnicity, employment and other factors.
The poll also gathered information on who Reform's supporters are. Six in ten are aged under 50; more than half (53 per cent) are in the lower social classes known as C2, D and E and 42 per cent are non-graduates.
More than a quarter of people who did not bother to vote in 2024 now say they would turn out and vote for Reform.