Can Reform win?

This page first posted 31 December 2024

Labour and the Conservatives have both been losing support with the electorate in 2024, despite Labour's landslide win at the general election in July. This has opened the gates for Reform to tap into these gaps in the electorate and has given them an opportunity to overtake the two big parties.

With both Labour and the Conservatives at around 25-30pc of the vote share in terms of voting intention, Reform is steadily behind them at 22pc as 2024 is coming to an end, a 7pc increase from the 15pc they got in July. When converted into seats, though, Reform would only get 36 seats if an election were to happen tomorrow.

However, this outlook could quickly change if support for Reforms were to grow further. Our latest research explores Reform's seat projections in terms of their support.

In the graph above, the blue line represents the seats that Reform could win relative to the percentage of the vote that they might win at an election. As their share of public support increases, so does the number of seats they would hold in parliament. The horizontal dotted purple line shows the number of seats needed for Reform to be the largest party in parliament and the solid purple line shows the number of seats needed for a parliamentary majority (326).

With 28pc of the public's vote, just 6pc more than their current support, Reform would become the largest party in parliament with just under 200 seats. In this scenario, Reform could be governing in a coalition with the Conservatives, likely with Nigel Farage as Prime Minister and Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch as a deputy Prime Minister.

If their vote share increases to 31pc, Reform would get an overall Commons majority. In this case, Reform could govern on their own and Nigel Farage would be Prime Minister and able to choose his cabinet freely. This would represent an exceptional scenario, as it would be the first time in over a century when neither of the two British mainstream parties, Labour or the Conservatives, would be in power.

While these projections could be achievable, given their opponents' weaknesses, there is no guarantee that Reform can get there. But there is a unique opportunity for Reform, as the main two parties have not been so vulnerable since the Labour party displaced the old Liberal party in 1922.

Appendix: Data table

The table below shows a number of scenarios for potential Reform UK support. The seat predictions for the four main parties are shown for each scenario, assuming that Labour and Conservative voters are equally likely to defect to Reform.