Reform’s polling continues to nosedive

Reform’s polling continues to nosedive



Nigel Farage of Reform UK, a poll, and a big red arrow pointing downwards

In the past few months, Reform UK has lost a lot of its sheen with UK voters. This problem is worsening too, with Reform now regularly skulking in second place in UK polls.

As we’ll get to, this isn’t even the worst poll position that Reform has held in the past week.

Reform’s polling will go lower

Earlier this month, commentator Dan Hodges expressed a theory on why Reform is suffering. The three factors he pointed to were:

  • The Burnham Bounce: “People being introduced to him for the first time tentatively like what they see”
  • The Starmer Anti-Bounce: “People expressing relief he’s gone”
  • The Farage Flounce: “Reform sleaze…is clearly cutting through negatively”

Hodges suggested that only the Farage Flounce was baked in. In other words, Prime Minister Andy Burnham will have to realise the sort of actual improvements which Starmer failed to deliver. While it’s certainly true Burnham is doing a lot of tinkering around the edges, the edges are now so far from the core that this may not achieve much in the long run.

As Hodges also noted, Farage’s sleaze problem is going to be harder to come back from. The lifecycle of a British politician usually involves a rise and a fall. The question is whether this current moment is a blip on Farage’s rise to becoming prime minister, or whether it’s the beginning of the end for him.

Popularity contest

As noted, the above poll isn’t even the worst that Reform has had; this is:

Lord Ashcroft is far from the most well-respected pollster but his outfit did previously have Reform leading the pack. In other words, they are seeing movement among the voters they poll — the same as other pollsters. The following poll is also from Lord Ashcroft:

Embarrassingly, nearly a fifth of Reform voters said they’d prefer Burnham to Farage. This is endemic of the problems that Hodges described. The public has become favourable to Burnham just as they’ve become unfavourable to Farage. It’s hard to see how Farage can fully turn that ship around given his many ongoing financial controversies, which include:

Sliding polls

As Keir Starmer discovered as prime minister, polling can always get worse. The reality right now is that we don’t quite know how bad things will get for Farage and Reform UK. There is every chance they can eventually rebound if Burnham fails to deliver, though, and there is ample evidence suggesting that the man will not deliver.

Featured image via Times Higher Education

By Willem Moore





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