YouGov
British online polling firm; pioneer of MRP sub-regional electoral modelling.
YouGov's 19-20 July 2026 poll showed only a slight shift towards Labour under new PM Andy Burnham, at odds with a Deltapoll survey in the same window that put Labour up eight points, leaving the size of his bounce disputed.
Last refreshed: 3 August 2026 · Appears in 3 active topics
How accurate were YouGov's 2026 MRP models when the results came in?
Timeline for YouGov
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YouGov is a British internet-based market research company, founded in 2000, headquartered in London and listed on the London Stock Exchange. It pioneered online panel polling across more than 55 countries; its MRP (Multilevel Regression and Post-stratification) model gained credibility after correctly forecasting the 2017 UK general election when most rivals failed.
Its MRP and sub-regional models are now a standard input for newsroom election coverage in the UK, US and Australia, and its Westminster voting-intention tracker has run continuously through the 2026 UK election cycle, putting Reform UK ahead of all parties from early May and holding that lead through five weeks of scrutiny into July.
YouGov's reach extends beyond UK politics into US midterms tracking and cross-topic polling on Foreign Policy questions, where its findings are cited by government, opposition and foreign observers alike as the most credible published benchmark available.
Pollsters split over Burnham's opening bounce
YouGov's fieldwork of 19-20 July put Reform UK on 23% and Labour on 20%, barely moved from its pre-Burnham numbers, directly contradicting Deltapoll's 17-20 July survey that had Labour up eight points to 28%, level with Reform.
The gap follows a five-week Reform plateau that broke only in YouGov's own 12-13 July fieldwork, when Reform slipped a single point to 24% and the Conservatives and Labour tied at 19%. Two rival methodologies now put Burnham's opening bounce anywhere between zero and eight points, a divergence YouGov's own panel has yet to resolve.
The Welsh forecast proved right
YouGov's final Senedd MRP projected Plaid Cymru on 43 seats and Welsh Labour on just 12, the lowest Welsh Labour share since 1906. The 7 May result vindicated the call: Welsh Labour collapsed to 9 seats, ending 27 years of continuous devolved government under one party.
The projection is now the reference point Welsh strategists use to judge every subsequent poll, a status that rests on the same MRP method that correctly called the 2017 general election when most rivals failed. For YouGov, Wales was the clearest single test of whether that 2017 credibility still holds nine years on, and it did.
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Written with AI from Lowdown's published reporting. Not individually reviewed by an editor. Updated 3 August 2026. Editorial standards.