Is tactical voting now the only way to defeat Farage?

A shocking new opinion poll predicting that Reform UK will have the largest Commons majority in modern political history will worry Labour and the Conservatives because it points to both parties haemorrhaging support in their heartlands, says polling expert John Curtice

There is nothing surprising about a new poll that suggests Reform UK could win an overall majority if a general election were held now – and that the Conservatives might not be far from extinction.

The latest MRP poll from Electoral Calculus – using a technique that analyses a large poll to estimate what would happen in every constituency – suggests that Reform might win as many as 445 seats (an overall majority of 240), leaving the Tories with a rump of just seven MPs. Even Labour are credited with just 73 seats.

We might wonder what to make of this “explosive megapoll” (as the newspaper that commissioned it put it), which seems to suggest Nigel Farage is set for the biggest Commons majority in modern political history.

First, there is nothing unusual about its headline voting numbers. It reckons that Reform, on 33 per cent, are 14 points ahead of Labour (on 19 per cent) and 17 points ahead of the Conservatives (on 16 per cent).

These figures are only a little more favourable to Reform than the current polling average; regular polling on average puts Reform on 32 per cent, 12 points ahead of Labour (on 20 per cent) and 14 ahead of the Conservatives (on 18 per cent).

On that assumption about the national movement being repeated everywhere, what is remarkable is not the MRP’s suggestion of the number of seats that Reform would win. It is that Labour’s estimated vote share is 16 points down on what the party won last year.

There are 81 constituencies where the party won less than 16 per cent last year. The Conservative vote is down eight points, and there are 64 seats where the party won less than 8 per cent last year.

So if the current national position in Wednesday’s poll was to play out in a general election, Labour and Conservative support would be bound to fall more heavily in at least some of the seats where the party did better last year – and thus potentially in the very seats they would be trying to defend against Reform. This, indeed, is the fate the Conservatives suffered last year.

According to the poll, Labour’s support is currently down on average by 21 points in seats it won last year – five points above its estimated Britain-wide fall. Meanwhile, the drop in Conservative support in Tory-held seats is 12 points, four points above the position in the country as a whole.

It is these figures that explain why Reform is projected to win a landslide majority.

This is not the first MRP poll to suggest both Labour and the Conservatives are losing ground more heavily in their previous heartlands. Both YouGov and More in Common reported a similar pattern last month.

That said, unlike those two polls, Wednesday’s included Jeremy Corbyn’s Your Party among the possible options. At 5 per cent, the party is reckoned to be doing especially well in seats with a substantial Muslim population.

Labour’s vote fell heavily in such seats last year, and the poll suggests the challenge from Corbyn means it could do so again. Not only could this result in Corbyn’s new party winning 13 seats, but also help pave the way for Reform to gain support from Muslim voters, too.

Labour are hoping to counter the challenge from Reform by persuading voters to choose the party in order to keep Farage from Downing Street.

Using evidence from previous work on the willingness of voters to vote tactically, Electoral Calculus have attempted to explain what this would mean for the outcome in seats.

This brings the estimated Reform tally down to 367 seats – similar to the 374 seats the party would win if the swing everywhere matched the change across the country as a whole, and still a comfortable 84-seat majority. In effect, tactical voting might counteract the tendency for Conservative and Labour support to fall more heavily in seats they were defending,

Even so, the Conservatives would still be left with a rump of just 24 seats, and Labour with no more than 117.

In the current electoral climate, Reform is potentially the beneficiary of an electoral system under which it is possible for a party to win a large majority on just a third of the vote. Wednesday’s poll indicates it will require much more than an appeal to voters to vote against Farage to stop that from happening. It will require dissuading voters from backing Reform in the first place.

John Curtice is professor of politics at Strathclyde University, and senior fellow at the National Centre for Social Research and The UK in a Changing Europe