23AUG

Greens overtake Labour in YouGov national VI

1 min read

19:09UTC

YouGov's Westminster voting intention poll on 19-20 April fieldwork showed Reform on 27%, the Greens on 17% and Labour on 16%: the first national poll in which the Greens have outright led Labour, with Reform recording its largest-ever national lead.

← Back to Reform loses three wards, wins Clacton Jump to analysis ↓

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Key takeaway

The Greens lead Labour nationally for the first time; Reform's lead is the largest it has recorded.

YouGov's Westminster voting intention poll on 19-20 April fieldwork put Reform UK on 27%, the Green Party on 17%, the Conservatives on 17%, Labour on 16%, the Liberal Democrats on 14%, and Restore Britain on 3% ¹. The sample size was 2,472. It is the first national Westminster poll in which The Greens lead Labour outright, and Reform's largest-ever national polling lead. Labour finishes fifth on the central estimate.

The Greens' rise tracks the same urban-Labour decay registered by the Salford Barton and Winton by-election the same week, where the party finished third on 18.7%. Reform's 27% sits inside the polling band that has held since February . The novelty in the sample is the Labour floor, which has now broken below The Greens. Whether the result is a single-poll outlier or a sustained reordering of the centre-left vote is the question every party manager will be reading the next YouGov for. The local elections on 7 May supply the first ballot test.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Westminster voting intention polls ask a sample of people which party they would vote for in a UK general election. YouGov's poll from 19-20 April 2026 , the most recent before the 7 May local elections , showed the Green Party (17%) ahead of Labour (16%) for the first time in any national poll. Reform UK led on 27%. The Conservatives tied the Greens at 17%. Labour finished fifth on 16%, behind four other parties. In the UK's Westminster voting system (first-past-the-post), a party's national vote share does not directly determine how many MPs it wins. Labour's vote is geographically concentrated in cities, meaning it wins more seats per percentage point than the Greens. The Greens won four Westminster seats in the 2024 general election with fewer total votes than this poll suggests they now hold nationally. The party's growth under Zack Polanski, who took over as leader in September 2025, has been driven by anti-government voters, particularly under-40s in urban areas, who are deserting Labour over Gaza, housing, and cost of living.

What could happen next?

Consequence
Labour now faces three-front vote loss: Reform on its right flank in traditional northern seats, Greens on its left in urban seats, and Your Party targeting Muslim-majority wards.

Sources:YouGov

Mentions:YouGov →Green Party →Reform UK →Restore Britain →Gaza →Liberal Democrats →Westminster →Zack Polanski →

First Reported In

Update #5 · 11 Days to Go: Six-of-six, RPA dies, Welsh lead flips

YouGov· 26 Apr 2026

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Causes and effects

Caused by

Green air comes out as governing begins

The Greens' 17% pre-election peak (ID:2804) is the baseline against which the 31 May-1 June 15% is measured as a two-point deflation

Occurred 1 Jun 2026

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This Event

Greens overtake Labour in YouGov national VI

Two polling firsts in the same sample, days from the local elections that will test both the Reform ceiling and the Labour floor on actual ballots.

Different Perspectives

Ian Davidson, Acting Returning Officer for Clacton

Davidson's office printed a 90cm ballot paper for the record 34-candidate field, with nothing in electoral law capping candidate numbers or the £500 deposit each pays. He expects the paper's size to raise printing costs and slow the count into the early hours, a strain that follows from the major parties' boycott, not from turnout.

Scottish Labour members

Members now choose between Michael Marra and Joe Fagan after Monica Lennon fell one MP nomination short of the three-MP, three-MSP threshold, a bar set by MPs and union officials rather than the wider membership. Whoever wins takes office having faced only one rival on the members' ballot.

Labour Party

Labour gained Penistone East from Reform on 20 August but lost Harraby South to Reform the same night, a wash that undercuts any claim of momentum. The party can point to beating Reform in a genuinely fought contest, but not to a pattern running only in its favour.

Liberal Democrats

The Liberal Democrats took two of Reform's May wards, Almondbury on 13 August and St Neots Eynesbury on 20 August, the latter on a 29.8-point rise in their own vote share. Both results let the party claim it is the beneficiary when voters turn against Reform, not Labour or the Conservatives.

Reform UK

Reform UK can point to winning Clacton unopposed by the other major parties and to taking Harraby South from Labour, a ward it had never previously contested. That gives the party two results to cite even as three previously held wards changed hands elsewhere in August.

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.