Constituency-level data reveals which parties are most threatened by Reform

A recent voting intentions poll from YouGov, completed on August 26, puts Reform on 28%, Labour 20% and the Conservatives on 17%.

The poll identifies the remarkable lead that Reform has built up over the other parties. The party is leading Labour by 8%, the Conservatives by 11% and the Liberal Democrats by 12%. The Liberal Democrats are now snapping at the heels of the Conservatives, and the Greens are doing much better than they did before the general election.

YouGov Voting Intentions Survey Responses 26th August 2025:

Reform has been ahead of all the other parties since the end of April in successive surveys, so their current lead in the polls is not just a blip. However, there is an important qualification to be made about these results. They are more of a reflection of how people view national level politics than a reflection of how they would vote in their own constituency.

No less than 31% of respondents in the YouGov survey did not identify which party they supported when it applied to their constituency. Some said they would not vote; others that they would vote for another party. Yet more said they didn’t know how they would vote; and finally, some refused to answer the question. It appears that voting intentions are rather uncertain at the present time – something that is true for all parties.

The next election could be four years into the future so a lot can change between now and then. That said, by looking at how voting played out at the constituency level in the general election of 2024, we can get a better sense of which parties are most challenged by Reform as things currently stand.

Competition between parties

If we examine correlations between vote shares for parties in the 632 constituencies in Great Britain at the last election, this indicates how much competition there was between them. If, for example, the correlation between Reform voting and Conservative voting was -1.0 it would mean that on average a 1% increase in the Reform vote was associated with a 1% decrease in the Conservative vote.

If, on the other hand, the correlation between the two was zero, it would mean there was no competition between them at all. The reality lies somewhere in between these extremes.

Correlations only look at support for two parties at a time, and this can give a misleading picture because interactions between support for all five parties can change things. For example, the Labour vote share in constituencies depends in part on the rivalry between the Conservatives and Reform.

If Reform took a lot of votes from the Conservatives, this would help Labour, since Labour and the Conservatives are strong rivals. So, we really need to look at relationships between voting for all parties at the same time to get an accurate picture of party competition.

To untangle these relationships, we need to use a technique which identifies the correlation between Reform voting and support for other parties, while taking into account these interactions. This can be done using multiple regression, the most widely used statistical technique in social science. It adjusts the correlations to deal with this problem.

How Reform votes relate to other party votes:

The chart shows the relationships between Reform voting and support for the other parties in the 2024 election derived from the multiple regression analysis. All the adjusted correlations are negative, which means that the parties were all competitors to Reform. When the Reform vote increased, their vote shares decreased and vice versa.

There were big differences in party competition in the election. It turns out that the sharpest competition was between the Liberal Democrats and Reform, with an adjusted correlation of -0.72. When the Liberal Democrats did well in a constituency the Reform vote was hammered. Essentially this means that Reform just doesn’t appeal to voters in constituencies where the Liberal Democrats are strong.

The second most important competition was between Labour and Reform with a correlation of -0.52. Roughly speaking, when the average Labour vote increased by 1%, the Reform vote declined by half a percent. The third most important competition was between Reform and the other parties (the nationalists and small parties) with a correlation of -0.34. The Greens were in fourth place with a correlation of -0.28.

Further analysis shows that constituencies with many economically deprived voters who are male, define themselves as “English” rather than “British”, and who are more likely to spoil their ballots to protest about politicians are more likely to support Reform.

There are important social and political forces related to deprivation and voter grievances behind the party’s current political success. The Tories and Reform are at each other’s throats in Westminster, but this does not necessarily apply to voters at the constituency level.

The surprise is the weak negative adjusted correlation of -0.13 between Reform and the Conservatives. This means that once all the party contests are taken into account, the rivalry between Reform and Labour was four times greater than between Reform and the Conservatives.

This is because right-wing supporters of the Conservative party see Labour and the Liberal Democrats as their enemies whereas they see Reform and the Conservatives as potential allies. The Tories lost votes to Reform but fewer than many people think.

These results are likely to be a poor guide to what will happen at the next election in 2028 or 2029 since so much could change. But if the current support for Reform holds up, Labour is likely to face a greater challenge from Reform than the Conservatives in that election.

Want more politics coverage from academic experts? Every week, we bring you informed analysis of developments in government and fact check the claims being made.

Sign up for our weekly politics newsletter, delivered every Friday.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Paul Whiteley, University of Essex

Read more:

• Reform v the Nottingham Post: why local media is crucial to democracy
• Our survey of Green party members suggests Zack Polanski has the mandate to take his party in a more radical direction
• Football fans will see Nigel Farage’s branded kit for the cynical move it is

Paul Whiteley has received funding from the British Academy and the ESRC.