YouGov put Reform UK on 25%, the Conservatives on 21%, Labour on 20% and the Greens down two points on 13% in its 5-6 July voting-intention poll 1. The lead has held across five weeks of scrutiny of Reform's funding and a Labour leadership upheaval. Voting intention measures which party respondents would back in an immediate general election, and the stability of Reform's number, against the backdrop of The Greens slipping from a 17% peak earlier in the cycle , suggests the manoeuvring at Westminster has not moved the wider electorate.
24JUL
Reform holds 25% through the storm
1 min read
12:51UTC
YouGov put Reform on 25%, the Conservatives 21%, Labour 20% and the Greens down two on 13%, its lead unmoved across five weeks of scrutiny.
PoliticsAssessed
Key takeaway
Reform sits unmoved at 25% despite a month of funding scrutiny and Labour's leadership crisis.
Deep Analysis
In plain English
Opinion polls ask a sample of voters which party they would support if there were an election tomorrow. YouGov's poll of 5 to 6 July put Reform UK on 25%, the Conservatives on 21%, Labour on 20% and the Greens down two points on 13%, a lead for Reform that has held steady for five weeks. A steady poll lead does not automatically mean a party will win the most seats in Parliament. Britain's electoral system rewards parties whose support is concentrated in specific areas, so a smaller national vote share can still produce more seats if it is better distributed. UKIP found this out in 2015: it won over one in eight votes nationally but ended up with only one MP.
Root Causes
Under first-past-the-post, a party's national vote share does not translate directly into Commons seats; what matters is whether that support is concentrated enough in individual constituencies to win them outright.
With Reform, the Conservatives, Labour and the Greens now splitting the vote across four parties in the 20 to 25% range, seat-modelling analysts note the outcome depends heavily on how evenly or unevenly each party's support is spread geographically, not simply on who leads the national poll.
Sources:YouGov
First Reported In
Update #11 · Farage to quit Clacton to force by-election
YouGov· 8 Jul 2026
Read original →Causes and effects
Caused by
Green air comes out as governing begins
The 5-6 July YouGov reading extends the same tracking poll series.
Occurred 1 Jun 2026
Read story →Reform plateau breaks after five weeks
The plateau break directly follows the reading that had shown Reform unchanged for five weeks.
Occurred 13 Jul 2026
Read story →This Event
Reform holds 25% through the storm
Reform's steady poll lead through a month of funding scrutiny and a Labour leadership crisis suggests the turmoil at the top is not shifting the ground beneath it.
Different Perspectives
Reform UK
Reform lost Old Catton, the Norfolk seat it won by 1,006 votes ten weeks earlier, to the Conservatives on 16 July, while holding second in both other 16 July by-elections it did not previously hold. The party's May intake already undershot MRP polling by 38%, evidence its local base is thinner than its seat count suggested.
MHCLG / Steve Reed
Reed confirmed 38 new unitaries for 14 counties on 16 July but held back West Sussex and Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, saying further time was needed. The department locked in the areas it was confident defending and paused the two it was not.
Local Government Association / litigating councils
Harlow's judicial review, filed 22 July, makes it the fifth council suing over reorganisation, joining Essex, Norfolk, Suffolk and Portsmouth, with none yet granted a full hearing. New LGA chair Eamonn O'Brien's 7 July intervention now sits behind their case, arguing the timetable itself risks statutory services.
Local Government Association
New chair Eamonn O'Brien broke the LGA's neutrality on reorganisation for the first time since December 2024, telling the incoming prime minister the 'unprecedented scale' of disaggregation risks statutory services and asking him to adjust the LGR timetable, aligning the sector's institutional voice with the judicial review claims Suffolk, Essex and Norfolk have already filed.
Incoming Burnham government
Burnham secured 349 of the backing the NEC's 81-MP threshold required by 13 July, becoming Labour leader on 17 July and prime minister on 20 July without a members' ballot. He now inherits the LGR timetable the LGA wants him to adjust and a finance bill his own backbencher, Liam Byrne, is trying to harden further via amendment NC34.
Rupert Lowe / Restore Britain
Lowe called Farage's Clacton contest a 'Reform-sponsored media circus' and kept Restore Britain out of it, pledging instead to stand in the second by-election he expects the Harborne inquiry to force later this year. The boycott doubles as a signal that Restore Britain, not Reform, will contest the 'real' vote.