Reform slips to third as Labour records biggest Ipsos poll lead since June 2025

Nation.Cymru staff

Reform UK’s support has fallen three percentage points in a month, pushing it into third place behind Labour and the Conservatives in the latest Ipsos Westminster poll.

Labour is on 32%, up five points since September, while the Conservatives have risen three points to 24%. Reform has dropped to 20%.

It is Labour’s largest lead recorded by Ipsos since June 2025 and the first time since then that the Conservatives have occupied second place.

The findings come after a separate poll for Nation.Cymru, published on Friday, showed Reform holding its ground in Wales, three points behind Plaid Cymru in voting intentions for a Senedd election.

The Ipsos results suggest the Conservatives are winning back voters from Reform. Among people who backed Nigel Farage’s party at the 2024 general election, 15% now support the Conservatives, up from 6% last month.

Meanwhile, the proportion of 2024 Conservative voters backing Reform has fallen from 22% to 16%.

Keiran Pedley, director of politics at Ipsos in the UK, said: “Whilst the headline figures do show a striking change, they confirm a pattern we have been seeing in the underlying data for some time. The Labour Party under Andy Burnham is resurgent, consolidating voters on the left behind them.

“On the right, the tectonic plates have been shifting recently and now this is reflected in the Conservatives – not Reform UK – being in a clear second place.”

He cautioned: “However, we should be mindful against overreacting to one poll. The Government faces a challenging budget this coming week.”

Mr Pedley added: “The picture today is very different to six months ago and it could be different again in six months time too.”

The poll also found declining confidence in Reform’s readiness to govern. Just 19% believed it was ready to form the next government, down from 22% last month and 29% in September 2025. Almost two-thirds, 62%, disagreed.

Farage’s personal ratings deteriorated, with 64% dissatisfied with his performance as leader, up three points. Satisfaction fell two points to 22%.

By contrast, Kemi Badenoch’s satisfaction rating rose seven points to 35%, her highest since becoming Conservative leader. However, only 24% believed her party was ready for government, while 50% disagreed.

Reform retained a clear advantage on asylum and immigration, with 28% saying it had the best policies, compared with Labour’s 14%. Its figure was nevertheless down from 35% last November.

The Liberal Democrats were on 9% in the Westminster voting figures, up one point, while the Greens fell five points to 8%.

In Wales, Friday’s Beaufort Research poll for Nation.Cymru put Plaid Cymru on 33%, followed by Reform on 30%, Labour on 15%, the Conservatives on 11%, the Greens on 6% and the Liberal Democrats on 4%.

Reform’s share was 0.7 percentage points higher than its result in May’s Senedd election. Plaid was down 2.4 points and Labour up 3.9.

The two surveys concern different elections and were conducted at different times, so their results cannot be directly compared.

Racist comments

Beaufort’s fieldwork took place between September 21 and October 11, before the ITV undercover documentary which showed multiple Reform figures making racist and misogynistic comments.

It completed 1,000 interviews, with headline voting figures based on 488 respondents aged 16 or over who named a party and rated their certainty of voting as nine or ten out of ten.

Ipsos interviewed 1,109 British adults between October 15 and 22. Its Welsh sample was too small to establish a reliable picture of changes in support within Wales.

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