Is Reform leading in the opinion polls?

Two polls now put Reform ahead of both Labour and the Conservatives, but...

Not an outlier. And nor - it seems - a one-off sampling error: that’s twice now that pollster Find Out Now has put Reform in the lead on who Britons would vote for if an election was held now.

The first poll of 22nd Jan gave Reform a 3pt lead. The latest poll of the 29th Jan has them ahead by 4pts. They’re projected to pick up a quarter of the vote. And that’s not out of kilter with the other pollsters. That’s standard stuff.

But other pollsters aren’t putting Reform ahead. So this is a one pollster headline. Instead of 20-23 per cent for either Labour or the Conservatives - the current range they’re finding the two titan forces of British politics polling in is 22-27 per cent. Some difference.

This is margin of error stuff. Is Reform ahead? When you consider all the polls, no. The Britain Elects poll tracker gives Labour a lead of two percentage points. Could Reform be ahead? Absolutely. They’re within the realms of reasonable probability. Not more probable than not. Not likely.

A possibility, most certainly.

But most notably now is that in our tracker Reform is leading the Conservatives. Kemi Badenoch’s Tories are, albeit just, sitting in third place.

I was combing the polls in Belgium (a country having recently formed a new government) and Germany (its Federal election mere weeks away) the other day and noted how, well, European British public opinion has become. In Germany the most popular right now is on 20-something per cent. Ditto Belgium. Ditto Italy. Ditto France (in a field of personalities). Only in Spain are the top two parties bathing north of 30. Labour hasn’t sat above 30 per cent since the start of October.

I could wax lyrically that this - that widespread apathy with mainstream politics and a growing indulgence of the radicals - is the inevitable consequence of a government coming in with just one third of the public vote. But it’s widespread. It transcends all nations with modern, globalised economies. Where there is insecurity of position, economic or social, may there be resentment. And may there be insurgence.

And they’ll win how many seats?

Campaign group Hope Not Hate have commissioned a sample-heavy poll and projection indicating Reform could be on course for between 76 and 169 seats in parliament. The writeup in the link above claims this:

We are entering a hyper marginal period in politics, with over 266 highly marginal seats.

Absolutely right here. In 2017 and 2019 less than three dozen seats were won with less than 40 per cent of the vote. That number in 2024 was a few dozen off 300. And in 2010, the year of what was meant to be a Liberal Democrat insurgency, that number was 106.

As to what Reform is on course to win depends on three things. The first two are turnout and tactical voting. We are witnessing some obscenely low turnout council by-elections right now. Apathy is high. And the tactical voting both to stop Reform, or indeed to kick out Labour, doesn’t appear to be materialising in those council by-elections as yet. Labour is squeaking by off split Tory and Reform votes. And Reform is coming through the middle in places like Lancashire to win with 30-something per cent. It is in general elections however when that phenomenon of voter power comes about, a social movement in support that simple MRP polls, unless bearing some personalised modifications by design, will struggle to replicate.

The third factor as to whether Reform wins big pertains to the government: delivery. “Fastest growing economy” counts for little if voters don’t feel it or see it.

Put simply: Feelings don’t care about your facts, anymore, for feelings are facts.

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Britain Predicts will return to its own seat-by-seat “nowcasts” soon. It might be worth looking at Cheshire’s own Runcorn and Helsby constituency, too.

Until then.