The polls suggest it could be an unprecedented result
The next general election isn’t scheduled to take place until 2029. Despite this, leading polling firms are now conducting regular polls of the public’s voting intention.
Some of these polls have been generating headlines due to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK Party surging, sometimes polling in first place. While individual opinion polls can give a snapshot of public opinion, they can sometimes be misleading as each poll has a margin of error, and averages of polls can be better at illustrating trends.
So what’s really going on in the polls right now?
In February, five polls on voting intention have been published. Four of these have had Reform in first place, with Labour ahead in the fifth. Reform are also ahead on the average of the polls around one percentage point ahead of Labour.
The average of these five most recent polls have Reform on 26.6 per cent, Labour on 25.4 per cent, the Tories on 21.4 per cent, the Lib Dems on 12.4 per cent and the Greens on 8.2 per cent.
This suggests that support for both Labour and the Tories has fallen since the 2024 general election, with support for both Reform and the Greens up. Support for the Lib Dems, meanwhile, appears to be static.
If these polls were to be borne out in a general election, it would deliver an unprecedented result, with the first time in modern political history that any party other than Labour or the Tories have received more votes than any other party.
As such, projecting what this result would look like in terms of the makeup of the House of Commons is incredibly difficult. The UK’s First Past the Post electoral system is not proportional, and so parties may receive substantial vote shares without winning a large number of seats.
Nevertheless, no matter how the votes are spread in different constituencies, it is reasonable to assume that were the next general election to look something like this there would be a significant group of Reform MPs in parliament.
The breakdown of the five most recent opinion polls is as follows:
| Pollster | Dates of fieldwork | Labour | Tory | Reform | Lib Dem | Green |
| Opinium | 19–21 Feb 2025 | 28% | 21% | 26% | 12% | 8% |
| Techne | 19–20 Feb 2025 | 25% | 22% | 26% | 12% | 7% |
| Find Out Now | 19 Feb 2025 | 24% | 20% | 28% | 12% | 10% |
| More In Common | 14–18 Feb 2025 | 25% | 23% | 26% | 12% | 7% |
| YouGov | 16–17 Feb 2025 | 25% | 21% | 27% | 14% | 9% |
| Average | N/A | 25.4% | 21.4% | 26.6% | 12.4% | 8.2% |
Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward
Image credit: Oatsy40 – Creative Commons
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