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.
12AUG
Reform holds 25% through the storm
1 min read
14:07UTC
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
Sinn Féin
Sinn Féin's John O'Dowd ruled out a Stormont walkout on 11 August despite calling the DUP increasingly difficult to work with, closing a question Conor Murphy had left open a fortnight earlier. Only Sinn Féin or the DUP can collapse the joint First Minister office, so the denial gives up the party's own leverage in budget talks.
Scottish Labour
Michael Marra, Joe Fagan and Monica Lennon declared for the Scottish Labour leadership, but each needs nine endorsements from MSPs, MPs and unions before members vote, with nominations closing 17 August. Lennon, the only woman standing, says the threshold favours a male-run process and could produce an all-male ballot.
Plaid Cymru
Plaid Cymru held both Welsh wards Reform challenged in the same set of by-elections, Bro'r Llynnoedd on Anglesey by 48.5% to 39.3% and Hengoed on Caerphilly by 49.9% to 36.4%. The party that leads the Welsh government kept Reform in second in both.
Conservative Party
The Conservatives lost three of ten council by-elections fought on 30 July and 6 August, two wards to Reform in Norfolk and one to the Greens in Surrey, continuing a run of losses since the May sweep. Every seat gone had been Conservative-held going into the contest.
Reform UK
Reform's 56 lost councillors since May came from defection, suspension and resignation, not lost votes, while the party gained three of ten council by-elections and finished second in four more over the same fortnight. That record undercuts reading the churn as electoral retreat.
Democratic Unionist Party
Gavin Robinson rejects Sinn Féin's characterisation of the institutions as precarious, says the DUP is "committed to" delivering for the public, and will not be "goaded" into a dispute he attributes to Treasury funding rather than unionist bad faith.