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On Monday, The London Economic published an article reporting that a recent poll showed the Reform lead had been cut to just three points and that the Green’s were continuing to surge. They were referring to a recent Lord Ashcroft Poll (11–15 Dec) that had Reform on 25%, the Tories on 22%, Labour on 18% and the Greens on 19%. According to the paper… “Kemi Badenoch is enjoying something of a renaissance,” and there’s a “surge of support for the Green Party,” and the LibDems are really struggling on just 10%.
TalkTV have also been making a big thing out of this poll, inviting all manner of Tory commentators on to offer their opinion about a possible change in fortune for the Tories, and most of them seem rather eager to suggest a corner has been turned, with some discussing the possibility of a Tory/Reform alliance. This particular video of Mark Dolan ‘interviewing’ former Tory Minister, Edwina Currie, really comes across more of a lovefest for the Tory party, peppered with a good helping of racism. You will forgive me (I hope), I know it’s really hard to sit through it, but all the TalkTV interviews I found were pretty stomach churning, and this one was the shortest video I could find. Any way, let’s take a closer look at this poll, shall we?
So, the first thing to observe is that the London Economic article fails to offer any context. For example, if you look at the polls immediately before and after, you realise that the Ashcroft poll is very much an exception…
The article fails to take into consideration that polling companies don’t all have the same demographic of participants, and when you compare ‘this’ Lord Ashcroft poll with earlier Lord Ashcroft polls you see that the dip in Reform’s lead doesn’t appear exceptional at all…
The Ashcroft table does seem to suggest that Reform might have peaked in October and could now be on the decline, but its to early to tell, and we should take into consideration that Farage has had a lot of negative publicity recently, with claims of racism and bullying by ex-students at his old school, and Reform run councils performing badly and raising council tax. While these stories may have had an impact on the current poll results, we dont know if they’ll continue to have an impact for more than a few days or weeks. Stories go cold after all, and people will no doubt be reminded of how much they’ve been let down by the other parties. We should also bear in mind that while Reform have never been in government, this also means there’s no track record for people to judge them against.
If we do a little more digging into polling results from other polling companies, like YouGov for example, we discover that Reform’s lead has dipped before, more than a few times, but it’s always risen again shortly after, and what’s also clear is that Reform have not conceded their lead for 8 months now…
The ‘Find Out Now’ poll table (below) is interesting because, not only does it show a clear 2 digit lead for Reform,, there is also a significant shift in Labour’s fortunes. Up until the start of October, it was a straight race between Reform and Labour, however, the subsequent 11 polls have Labour polling 3rd, with the Tories and the Greens running a close race for 2nd place. The London Economic is right about the Green surge at least. The fact that almost every polling company is showing the Greens are now either catching up with, or out-polling, the LibDems suggests that they are fast emerging as king makers in their own right…
So, to conclude, even if December proves to be a bad month for Reform (bearing in mind all the negative news stories), if we take a look at the combined polling table, if anything, Reform’s lead has only grown each month, so it’s really hard to understand why Tories (and Tory commentators) seem so eager to start counting their chickens after just one poll. Unless they’re trying to rally their demoralised troops, and/or demoralise the opposition? Well, here’s a little reminder of the facts on the ground, over the previous 7 months and something like 170 polls during that time…
NOV 2025: Reform lead average: 12.00%
OCT 2025: Reform lead average: 11.04%
SEPT 2025: Reform lead average: 9.56%
AUG 2025: Reform lead average: 9.13%
JUL 2025: Reform lead average: 6.96%
JUN 2025: Reform lead average: 5.37%
MAY 2025: Reform lead average: 7.35%
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