A new poll by People Polling conducted for GBNews has put Reform on 24% – nine points above the Conservatives and just 11 points behind Labour.
But Matthew Goodwin, who conducted the survey, warned that pollsters ‘take a single poll with a big dose of caution.’
Speaking on GB News, Prof Matthew Goodwin said:
“These are historic numbers, it’s difficult to know, really, what’s accurate and what isn’t at this stage.
“If we take a step back and look at all of the polling overall, then I think we can actually see a number of key themes coming out.
“One is the Conservative vote does seem to be imploding. The average Conservative support is down. This week it’s lower than where it was at the beginning of the campaign.
“The second thing we can see is Reform are doing much better now than they were at the beginning of the election campaign and the third thing we can see is Labour holding on to these very big, impressive leads in the polling. There’s a little bit of evidence that’s coming down in some polls, but they’re doing well.
“The headline numbers are Labour 35%, Reform 24%. Conservatives 15%, Lib Dems, 12%.
“This is higher than the previous peak we’ve had for Reform with YouGov on 19. This is Reform going up to 24. Let me explain what I think is going on here.
“This is a week where we’ve seen the Reform manifesto released. This is a week where we’ve seen the leaders’ debates, and the snapshot poll suggesting people thought Nigel Farage won that debate.
“This is the week where we’ve seen front page coverage of Reform pretty much back to back in the national papers. And to be honest with you, if you look at all of the polling that we’ve had over the last week, the average Reform vote has been inching up in every poll that we’ve had. Every pollster, not just us, has had a record high vote shares for Reform: not this high, but they’ve had record highs.
“When you’re dealing with polls, we take a single poll with a big dose of caution. We say, this is where we think maybe things are.
“What I think is unquestionable, is actually Nigel Farage and Reform have had a very good election campaign. And I think that is now beyond doubt.
“If these numbers are true, though, this is real history making stuff.”
