Nigel Farage attacks YouGov over low polling figures – but Reform’s support is dropping across the board

Nigel Farage has accused YouGov of being “deceptive” after the polling company consistently showed Reform with less support than other surveys. He has claimed the company broke transparency rules set out by the British Polling Council over how it presents headline figures. As a result, YouGov has agreed to publish more data in future.

The chart below compares Britain’s monthly voting intentions for Reform in a poll of polls derived from 14 different agencies, with voting intentions for the party from YouGov. The comparison runs from the start of 2025 to March 2026. At first glance, it appears that Farage is right – the YouGov data is below the poll of polls data for most of the time.

However, if we calculate the difference between the two series, the poll of polls average for Reform over the last 15 months is about 28% in voting intentions – for YouGov it is about 26%. This 2% difference is well within the margin of error associated with polling; what statisticians describe as “not statistically significant”.

Vote intentions for Reform, poll of polls and YouGov

The margin of error arises because polls try to measure support for the party across Britain from a survey of only 1,500 to 2,000 respondents. A good survey tries to replicate the diversity of the country in voting intentions, but it may differ from the country-wide support for the party because of random chance.

There is no real difference between the two series in the chart once this chance element is taken into account. If the survey has a truly representative sample, this random element can be ignored. But if there are problems with the sample, it will be inaccurate.

One such problem is accurately representing ethnic minorities in the sample, because they are less likely to respond to requests to do a survey. If a particular group is underrepresented, this can bias the results. To compensate for this problem, pollsters like YouGov use weighting, which involves giving more weight to some respondents than to others.

For example, the 2021 census shows that 4% of the population in Britain identifies as ethnically black. If only 2% of survey respondents fit this description, pollsters deal with this by counting these respondents twice in the analysis, which produces 4% black respondents.

Different agencies use different weighting schemes, which gives rise to variations in the answers they get to surveys. This is acceptable, providing these differences are not too large (not statistically significant).

Another factor may be the questions asked. This is where YouGov’s discrepancy arises.

YouGov has said it asks respondents first about general voting intention, and then specific constituency-level voting. This, the company says, takes account of tactical voting and is a more accurate representation of how a general election would play out.

There are clear differences between responses to the national and constituency questions – notably, more “don’t knows” in the latter, which means more uncertainty in the constituency responses.

My explanation of this is that when people are thinking about their own neighbourhood, they realise that voting involves a serious decision which can change their lives. When they respond to the national question, they are more likely to use it as a protest against the government and other parties.

Is Reform losing ground?

One reason Farage may be upset is because there is clear evidence that Reform is losing ground in the polls since the start of the year. This can be seen in the chart below, which shows a poll of polls of weekly voting intentions for the five major national parties in Britain since the July 2024 general election.

In the early weeks of 2025, Reform moved ahead of both Labour and the Conservatives – reaching 30% in vote intentions by May that year. The party’s support hovered around this figure until the start of 2026, when it began to decline. In October 2025, Reform was at 31% in voting intentions, but by March this year it was at 27%.

Vote intentions for the five major parties in Britain since the general election

Polling is important to all politicians, despite the fact that many criticise it if they appear to be losing ground. Farage is probably more attentive than most because Reform’s support has been so volatile over time – and what goes up can come down.

With its success in local government elections, Reform is now exposed to much closer scrutiny than it was in the past. Some news stories that may explain its now-declining popularity include Reform-controlled councils raising council tax after pledging to “reduce waste and cut your taxes”, and the party receiving the largest-ever political donation from a living individual in British history. Neither of these bode well for a party claiming to represent working-class voters.

Farage (along with Kemi Badenoch) may also be regretting his rush to support the US and Israel in their war against Iran. A recent poll showed that only 28% of UK respondents supported the war, while 49% opposed it.

In the past, Farage has claimed to be a close friend of Donald Trump, but he talks about this much less these days – the US president’s approval ratings are now very poor in the UK.

Both Reform and the Conservatives are on the wrong side of public opinion on this issue, something which is likely to haunt them in the May elections this year if the war continues to damage the economy.

Paul Whiteley has received funding from the British Academy and the ESRC.