Highlights
- Labour would be the largest party with 241 seats but short of a majority, leaving a hung parliament
- The Conservatives would take 130 seats and Reform 123, compared with 311 projected for Reform a year ago
- Braverman and Robert Jenrick would lose their seats to the Tories, their former party
- The rise of Rupert Lowe's Restore Britain is splitting the right-wing vote
ASIAN politician Suella Braverman would lose her seat to the Conservatives if a general election were held today, according to a major new poll. The same poll revealed that Reform UK has fallen from near-majority territory to third place in just 12 months.
YouGov's latest seat-by-seat projection puts Labour ahead with 241 seats, with the Tories second on 130 and Reform third on 123. No party would win an overall majority, the Times reported.
Braverman, Reform UK shadow education secretary, and Robert Jenrick both left the Tories to join Nigel Farage's party. The poll projects that both would be defeated by candidates from their old party.
A dramatic reversal
The figures mark a steep turnaround from YouGov's previous projection in September last year. That poll had Reform on 311 seats, just short of the 326 needed for a majority, with Labour on 144 and the Tories on 45.
YouGov puts Reform's national vote share at 22 per cent, down from 27 per cent a year ago. The drop follows the emergence of a rival on its right and a run of financial scandals affecting the party.
Tories have risen from 17 to 21 per cent. Labour, now led by prime minister Andy Burnham, has gained three points to reach 24 per cent.
The poll is a boost for Kemi Badenoch as she prepares for her second party conference as Tory leader. It would give the Tories more seats than they won at the 2024 general election.
It also shows that a Reform–Conservative pact would still fall short of the numbers needed to govern.
Restore Britain splits the right
YouGov found that Restore Britain, led by the former Reform MP Rupert Lowe, is taking more than three percentage points of Reform's support. That loss is costing Farage's party marginal seats across the country.
The split on the right helps Labour hold seats it might otherwise lose to a single right-wing challenger. The one high-profile Labour loss projected is health secretary Yvette Cooper, who would be defeated by Reform.
Patrick English, YouGov's head of elections, said fragmentation was hurting the right more than the left. He said the left's combined vote share was larger and converted into seats more efficiently. That gives Labour several possible routes to a working majority, while the right has none.
Tactical voting against Reform
Separate YouGov research points to growing anti-Reform tactical voting. More than 40 per cent of Labour and Liberal Democrat voters said they would back the Tories to stop Reform winning in their constituency, as did 26 per cent of Green voters.
Tactical voting is also happening in the other direction, with about 15 per cent of Conservative voters saying they would support Labour for the same reason.
Peter Kellner, former president of YouGov, told Times Radio the results were "very, very bad news" for Farage.
Reform's deputy leader Richard Tice said he was confident of a strong showing at the general election. He argued that council by-election results showed the Tory vote collapsing.
How Labour could govern
Labour would lose 162 of the 403 seats it currently holds and would need support from other parties to govern. The Liberal Democrats are projected to win 71 seats, the Greens nine, the SNP 48 and Plaid Cymru 15.
Despite polling 12 per cent nationally, the Greens would win only nine seats.
Conservative peer and polling expert Lord Hayward said the result pointed to an "anti-Brexit coalition". He cautioned that politics was so fluid that the picture could change within months.
