22OCT

A second pollster puts Labour ahead of Reform

2 min read

16:26UTC

More in Common gave Labour 28% to Reform UK's 24% in fieldwork from 24 to 27 July, its first Labour lead since March 2025.

← Back to ITV footage drives Reform councillors out Jump to analysis ↓

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Key takeaway

Two pollsters agree Labour has recovered; they disagree by four points on how far.

More in Common put Labour on 28% and Reform UK on 24% in fieldwork carried out from 24 to 27 July among 2,061 adults⁠¹. Labour is up four points and Reform down two, the first Labour lead that pollster has recorded since March 2025. The Conservatives held 22%, the Liberal Democrats rose a point to 12% and The Greens fell three to 8%.

Our last briefing left the size of the recovery open, with Deltapoll putting the two parties level and YouGov showing barely a ripple. YouGov's tracker for 26 and 27 July now has Labour and Reform tied on 22%, Conservatives on 21%: the same direction, a smaller move. The four-point disagreement between the houses is a weighting signature rather than a sampling accident. More in Common weights on 2024 recalled vote and political attention; YouGov's daily tracker runs a lighter turnout filter.

Labour on 28% still sits nearly six points below the vote share that delivered its 2024 majority, and Reform's earlier plateau had already begun to give way before Burnham arrived. Bounces after a change of leader historically decay inside eight to twelve weeks unless an event locks them in. Gordon Brown's peaked at eight points in July 2007 and had gone by October.

With no general election due before 2029, the lead converts into leverage rather than seats. It is what Burnham can point to when Labour MPs in the reorganising counties press him to reopen an abolition timetable he inherited and did not write.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

More in Common is a polling company that regularly asks a representative sample of the public which party they would vote for. This survey questioned 2,061 adults between 24 and 27 July and found 28% would vote Labour against 24% for Reform UK, Labour's first lead in a More in Common poll since March 2025. A single poll always carries a margin of error, usually around two to three percentage points either way, which is why a shift only counts as real, rather than statistical noise, once another company's fieldwork finds the same pattern.

Deep Analysis

Root Causes

More in Common's 24-27 July fieldwork is the first full week of polling to fall entirely after Andy Burnham completed his cabinet on 23 July, whereas Deltapoll's 17-20 July fieldwork and YouGov's 19-20 July fieldwork both straddled the reshuffle itself.

A poll fielded entirely after a political transition typically captures settled opinion more cleanly than one taken mid-transition, which is one structural reason the later poll shows a clearer Labour lead than the two conducted while the reshuffle was still unfolding.

What could happen next?

Meaning
A second pollster confirming Labour's post-Burnham rise turns a single fieldwork reading into a corroborated trend, strengthening the case that the bounce is real rather than a Deltapoll artefact.
Risk
YouGov's flat 22-22 tracker in the same period means the polling industry has not reached consensus, leaving open the possibility the Labour lead narrows or disappears in subsequent fieldwork.

Source Landscape

This story draws on centre-left-leaning sources from United States

United States

Primary parallel: The 2016 inquiry into the 2015 general election's failed polling, commissioned jointly by the British Polling Council and the Market Research Society, found nearly every pollster had converged on a dead heat through shared methodological assumptions, a herding effect that masked a shared error rather than reflecting genuine agreement.

Counter-parallel: The July 2026 pattern is the opposite: three houses, More in Common, Deltapoll and YouGov, are diverging rather than converging, which by that same 2016 inquiry's logic is the healthier sign, since it shows firms are not simply copying each other's assumptions about Reform's ceiling.

Consensus view: A single house's lead is ordinarily treated as statistical noise until a second pollster replicates it. More in Common's four-point Labour lead lands three weeks after Deltapoll's 17-20 July fieldwork first put Labour level with Reform at 28%, giving the shift a second, independent reading rather than one outlier.

Counter-view: YouGov's tracker showing Labour and Reform tied at 22% in the same late-July window supports reading the gap as a weighting difference between houses rather than a genuine national swing, since all three surveys overlap in fieldwork dates but differ in how they filter and weight the Reform vote.

Key tension: Whether three pollsters converging on Labour's rise settles the question, or whether YouGov's flatter figure means the industry itself is split on how to weight Reform's support.

Sources:Bloomberg

Mentions:More in Common →Reform UK →YouGov →Deltapoll →Conservative Party →Liberal Democrats →Green Party →Andy Burnham →Gordon Brown →British Polling Council →

First Reported In

Update #14 · Bev Craig wins under a revived voting system

Bloomberg· 3 Aug 2026

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Causes and effects

Caused by

Pollsters split on the Burnham bounce

The unresolved split between pollsters on the Burnham bounce is settled in direction, not size, by More in Common's new lead.

Occurred 20 Jul 2026

Read story →

This Event

A second pollster puts Labour ahead of Reform

Two houses now show the same direction of travel since Burnham took office, which settles whether the shift is real without settling how large it is.

Led to

YouGov puts Labour ahead of Reform

More in Common's late-July Labour lead precedes YouGov's confirming lead on 11 August.

Occurred 11 Aug 2026

Read story →

YouGov puts Reform third behind Tories

More in Common gave Labour a lead over Reform before YouGov did.

Occurred 12 Oct 2026

Read story →

Different Perspectives

Scottish National Party / John Swinney

Swinney told the SNP conference in Aberdeen on 17 October that Scotland is ready for independence, but set no referendum date, bill or Section 30 request. He launched a new campaign instead and extended the £2 bus fare cap to the north east from April 2027.

Liberal Democrats / Ed Davey

Davey ruled out a national partnership with the Greens on 19 October after their Brighton conference passed a "Zionism is racism" motion, and wrote to two Jewish community bodies. He left untouched the councils the two parties already run together.

Reform UK / Richard Tice

Tice alleged ITV's reporter used false details to get a press-office job and said ITV had "likely broken the law", telling members not to speak to it until it apologises. Reform also opened investigations into members, with some suspensions, so the party is contesting the broadcaster and disciplining councillors at once.

Rhun ap Iorwerth / Welsh Government (Plaid Cymru)

Ap Iorwerth presented six priorities to the Senedd on 22 September without numeric targets or a named partner party, promising to work across the chamber where there is common ground. He says his government will be judged on results.

Michael Marra / Scottish Labour

Marra won the leadership on 19 September, and three days later his 17 MSPs backed Swinney's right-to-decide motion once their child-poverty amendment was written in. He says Scottish Labour's task is to tell voters what it stands for.

Andy Burnham / Labour Party

Burnham told conference in Liverpool on 29 September that Labour's next manifesto will commit to changing the electoral system, and invited every party into a National Commission on Electoral Reform. He has not named a replacement system, and no chair or remit has been published.

Written with AI from Lowdown's published reporting. Not individually reviewed by an editor. Editorial standards.