If there was an election tomorrow, this is who would win (but only by 1%)
Keir Starmer’s Labour party would win another general election if one was held tomorrow, according to the first YouGov poll since last year’s vote.
However, the margin of victory for the government would be extremely small – and it’s not the Conservatives who pose the biggest threat.
Instead, it’s Reform UK who are just 1% behind Labour in the poll.
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch will be jittery over statistics showing 15% of those who backed her party last July would now choose Reform instead.
Labour won a landslide of 412 seats at the general election despite picking up just under 34% of the national vote total.
It would be very difficult for the party to hold on to anywhere near as many constituencies with the backing of just 26% of voters, as the YouGov poll suggests it would now get.
But unlike the Conservatives, it appears Labour’s support is not leaking over to a single party.
Among its backers at the last election, the YouGov poll says 4% would now vote Tory, 5% would vote Reform, 6% would go for the Green Party and 7% would vote Liberal Democrat.
That could pose a challenge for the PM as he tries to work out which tack the country would prefer his government to take.
Alternatively, he may be buoyed by the finding that 17% of Labour voters say they don’t know what party they would now opt for – suggesting he may have a chance of winning them back if he keeps manifesto promises.
The polls also shows Reform has a three-point lead among British men, while Labour and the Tories are tied on 25% among women.
Does this mean Nigel Farage will lead the opposition?
Not so fast. As we learned at the last general election, vote percentage doesn’t necessarily translate into seats.
Reform got an impressive 14.3% vote share but only ended up with five seats, while the Liberal Democrats won a massive 72 seats with a smaller percentage.
Under the UK’s ‘first past the post’ electoral system, it helps to be a deeply embedded party with a solid voting bloc.
A party could get a quarter of the total votes in an election, but if all those votes are in constituencies where a bigger party won slightly more, they still won’t get any seats.
Last July, Nigel Farage’s party came second in an impressive 98 seats. If he wants more power when the next election comes around, he’ll need to push over that barrier.
Labour has a massive 14-point lead over the second-placed Greens among 18 to 24-year-olds, as Nigel Farage’s party takes the third spot with 19% compared to 5% for the Tories in the age group.
Meanwhile, the Conservatives lead among those aged 65+ with 35% of that demographic.
The government has seen much of its support dry up in the six months since the general election, following repeated controversies over issues such as the slashing of the winter fuel allowance and freebies.
An online petition calling for another election to be held gained more than three million signatures last year and a debate on the topic was held in parliament earlier this month.
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
For more stories like this, check our news page.