Can Reform really win a majority at next election?

A “mega poll” by YouGov suggests Reform UK would almost certainly form a government if a general election were held now. It puts Nigel Farage’s party just short of an overall Commons majority.

- SEAN O'GRADY

YouGov’s result is arrived at by using a large-sample “MRP” poll, adding statistical techniques of Multilevel Regression and Post-stratification to census and other data to model and predict the outcome in each constituency - and then tot up the numbers. Broadly, it tells us what we know already - that Reform is popular right now and that Westminster's old two-party system is looking broken.

It has caused a stir, not least because it suggests cabinet ministers and other big beasts including Angela Rayner, Yvette Cooper, Wes Streeting, Pat McFadden, Jeremy Hunt, Mel Stride, James Cleverly and Suella Braverman would all be out.

But there are also reasons to calm down...

Will a general election be held now?

No.

So what's the point?

The MRP crystallises dramatically the current state of public opinion and shows how extraordinary the 2028 or 2029 general election might be - more than “watershed” elections that took place in 1945, 1979 and, arguably, 1997.