Nigel Farage’s Reform party has overtaken the Conservatives in a poll for the first time in a national poll.
The Tories were pushed into third in the survey, by pollsters YouGov one point behind Reform on 18 percent to 19 percent
The findings will come as a body blow to Rishi Sunak after a disastrous election campaign and risks triggering panic among many Tory MPs.
As the TV showdown opened he told millions of viewers “we are now the opposition to Labour”.
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The poll found support for Reform had increased by two points to 19 per cent while the Tories were unchanged on 18 per cent.
At the end of the debate, Mr Farage said to Ms Mordaunt: “A vote for you is actually now a vote for Labour.”
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Many Tories now will be wondering if this was a freak poll or if more with Reform going further in front are set to be unleashed over the last three weeks of the election campaign. If Reform builds up a lead of five or more points it could see the world’s oldest political party go into a meltdown and face a wipeout.
Is this going to make much of a difference with FPTP? I doubt it.
It won’t make a huge difference to how many seats Reform get (though with the way they’ve been polling, Electoral Calculus suggests they might get 4-5), but what it does is cuts into votes for the Conservatives, which ends up helping Labour and the Lib Dems. Most of the predictions I’ve put into Electoral Calculus based on the latest polls have had Reform taking enough votes from the Tories that the Lib Dems end up being the second largest party. That’s a pretty big change, despite FPTP!
That would be interesting. God damn this is going to be an exciting election.
It is pretty exciting, isn’t it? I’m actually in Canada the week of the election, so in the event of a Conservative wipeout, I reckon the Canadian news coverage of that would be pretty epic, since it would repeat their 1993 election.
Not really, and it’s still unlikely Reform will win any seats. Clacton probably being their best shot.
But it’s more about the symbolism of the most successful party in British history being relegated to third place in the polls.