by “A vote for Reform is a vote for Labour.”
This phrase has become a central part of the Conservative Party’s campaign, as it counters the surge in support Nigel Farage’s party has received – apparently at its own expense.
Using constituency-level polling, our new tool looks at how Reform is currently polling in your constituency, and examines three possible scenarios that highlight whether a vote for Reform is blocking the Tories to take your seat.
The nature of the UK political system means that although Reform is polling at around 15 per cent, it is likely to pick up only a handful of seats.
One poll at constituency level, from Survation, estimates he will get just seven seats. Another, from YouGov, suggests that it is unlikely to get any business, although this was done shortly before the popular Mr Farage’s return to the fray.
This means that, if the Conservatives are right, the hundreds of thousands of votes cast for Reform will have very little electoral success.
One of the main assumptions behind the Tories’ line of attack is that, if Reform were not to stand, the vast majority of their voters would move to the Conservatives.
This is unlikely.
In fact, only 36 per cent of Reform voters would support the Conservatives, according to a recent YouGov poll. The rest would support the Lib Dems or Labor (both on 6 per cent), the Greens (on 4 per cent) and one in ten would support other parties.
A third of its voters would not vote or no decision would have been made, according to the poll.
However, despite the unanimous second party preferences of Reform voters, it is clear that Reform could influence Conservative colors in some seats.
In the event that 36 percent of their votes go to the Conservatives, there are 34 seats across Great Britain where this would be enough to push them ahead of the first party.
Most of these, 24 in all, would leave them overtaking Labour. Nine would come from the Liberal Democrats, and one – Gordon and Buchan – would be from the SNP.
Across all these seats, the Conservatives are thought to be within five points of the ruling party.
In Sittingbourne and Sheppey, Labor is expected to get 35.5 per cent of the vote to the Conservatives’ 35.4 per cent. With Reform averaging 16.2 per cent, only a small defect from the party could help the Conservatives hold the seat.
Other seats where Reform could steal the seat include Witney, currently held by Solicitor General Robert Courts, which is polling just one point behind the Liberal Democrats, with Reform on 8.1 per cent of the vote .
In Suffolk Coast, Thérèse Coffey, the former health secretary, is in danger of losing her seat by two points, where Reform has the support of one in eight voters. Victoria Prentis, the attorney general, is also in a seat, Banbury, where a third of Reform voters who moved to the Conservatives could see her retain the seat.
In another case, which would be more favorable to the Conservatives, those who say they will not vote or “don’t know” who they will vote for would be removed from the equation.
If they voted in a similar way to those already decided, it would mean that just over half (56 per cent) of the Reform vote would go to the Tories.
As a result, the Tories would have retained 64 seats, preventing Labor from winning 48 of them.
In this case, the MPs who would retain their seats include “Minister for Common Sense” Esther McVey and Mel Stride, the Work and Pensions Secretary.
Is electoral reform worth the cost to the Conservatives?
In both cases, the victory of the Reform voters is unlikely to have any substantive impact on the general outcome of the election.
Between the two polls at constituency level, the Conservatives are expected to win only 115 seats. Labor could win 434 seats, a working majority of over one hundred.
In our first scenario, Labour’s number of seats would drop to 403. In our third scenario, they would fall to 380 seats – a higher majority than Boris Johnson achieved in 2019.
What it would do is cement the Conservatives as the main opposition party, 160 seats ahead of the Liberal Democrats.
In the current opinion polls, they are expected to be only 63 seats ahead of the third party.
Does the Restoration stand a chance anywhere?
Despite the assumption that Reform voters are stealing votes from the Conservatives, the party is now firmly in conflict in its own right in some parts of the country.
Across 17 seats, an average of YouGov and Survation polls suggests Reform could be within 15 points of the main party.
In Ashfield, where Lee Anderson, a former Conservative, represents the party, they are just six points behind Labour. The figures are close to the same in North West Norfolk, Great Yarmouth and Exmouth and Exeter East.
Looking at the Survation poll alone, Reform leads in these four, as well as three others, including Mr Farage’s seat of Clacton.
However, a large increase in seats for Reform will be difficult. In the large number of seats in which they stand, they have consistent support in the mid-teens, well below the threshold generally required to be the largest party.
In less than one seat out of 20 do they manage to exceed 20 percent of the vote, according to current opinion polls.
Last week, Mr Farage suggested that, given his party’s surge in the polls, a vote for the Conservatives was, in fact, a vote for Labour.
Clever background on the Tory line of attack, but so far the truth about this is only in a handful of places.
