Today, YouGov have released our first MRP of the new parliament, marking almost a year since the 2024 general election in which Labour won a historic 172 seat majority.
If an election were held tomorrow, the central projection from our MRP estimates that Labour would not only lose their majority, falling to 178 seats, but in doing so become second party by some distance in a hung parliament in which Reform UK would be the largest force.
According to our data and models, Nigel Farage’s party would come out of an election with 271 seats, an enormous improvement on their 2024 total of five, placing the party close to government.
The Conservatives would be reduced even further from their poor 2024 result – already the worst ever for the party – falling to a mere 46 seats, putting them fourth behind the Liberal Democrats.
In Scotland, the Scottish National Party (SNP) would rise once again to claim the status as the largest party north of the border. Our expectation, should a general election be happening now, is that John Swinney’s party would make a strong recovery from their low 2024 seat haul, reaching support levels similar to 2017 and winning 38 constituencies in the process.
Elsewhere, the Liberal Democrats would improve on their record-breaking 2024 performance, adding an additional nine seats to bring their tally up to 81. The Greens and Plaid would also both advance, winning an extra three constituencies each to bring their totals to seven seats apiece.
As well as winning just 224 seats between them in the central projection, the two traditional powerhouse parties of British politics, Labour and the Conservatives, would win a combined vote share of just 41%, down from 59% last year. That a clear majority would now vote for someone other than the two established main parties of British politics is a striking marker of just how far the fragmentation of the voting public has gone over the past decade.
According to our data and methods, 26% of voters would opt for Reform UK, 23% for Labour, 18% for the Conservatives, 15% the Liberal Democrats, 11% the Greens, 3% the SNP, 1% Plaid, and 2% for other parties and independent candidates.
Who governs?
Across all model simulations, Reform UK are the largest party in the parliament in around 99%, with the small remainder of simulations pointing toward Labour being largest. A hung parliament is also by far the most likely outcome, according to our data and models, if an election were on the cards right now, happening in around 97% of simulations.
According to our central projection, no realistic two-party government or coalition would reach the 326 seats required for a mathematical House of Commons majority. Combining the Reform and Conservative total figures leaves us at a total of 317 – the same number of seats which the Conservatives alone won under Theresa May back in 2017.
Back then, the Conservatives relied on a confidence and supply arrangement with the Democratic Unionist Party in order to govern. In our central projection, a Reform-Conservative coalition would need to do something similar.
In 9% of model simulations, the combined Reform and Conservative total is enough for a mathematical majority. In only a tiny fraction of simulations does the Labour and Liberal Democrat figure come close to the majority line, but more ‘rainbow’ style coalition possibilities do appear.
For instance, combining the Labour, Liberal Democrat, and SNP totals produces a majority in just 3% of simulations. Adding the Greens brings this figure to 11%, while adding Plaid pushes it up to 26%.
Where does Reform’s rise come from?
Reform’s meteoric rise to becoming comfortably largest party in a hung parliament is driven by impressive performances right across the country – including in Scotland. In terms of seat totals, Reform UK would be the largest party in each of the East Midlands, East of England, North East, South East, Wales, West Midlands, and Yorkshire and the Humber under our central estimate, as well as being tied with Labour in the North West.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the new additions to the Reform UK column are almost exclusively constituencies which are estimated (by Professor Chris Hanretty) to have voted Leave in the 2016 EU referendum. Of these 266 Reform gains, just ten did not back Brexit: three in Scotland, two in Wales, and five in England.
The latest YouGov voting intention data suggests that around 51% of those turning out to vote in a hypothetical election being held now who voted Leave in 2016 would back Reform UK – the largest share of this segment of the electorate by a considerable distance.
Labour woes
Labour’s defeat in an election such as this would be quite a staggering fall from a strong 2024 performance which produced a majority which many expected could carry them through at least two election cycles.
Reform UK is the primary recipient of seats moving away from Labour, with 194 going in that direction. But the party also loses 27 seats to the SNP in Scotland, six seats to the Conservatives in England, three seats to the Greens, three to Plaid, one to the Liberal Democrats (former Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg’s old seat of Sheffield Hallam), and one to other candidates.
Among the electoral casualties would be seven current cabinet ministers, most notably deputy prime minister Angela Rayner in Ashton-under-Lyne and home secretary Yvette Cooper in Pontefract, Castleford and Knottingley.
They would be joined in this misery by education secretary Bridget Phillipson in Houghton and Sunderland South; business secretary Jonathan Reynolds in Stalybridge and Hyde, culture secretary Lisa Nandy in Wigan, defence secretary John Healey in Rawmarsh and Conisbrough; and cabinet office minister Pat McFadden in Wolverhampton South East.
Labour are, according to our model, dropping everywhere, with their biggest vote share declines since 2024 coming in Rhondda and Ogmore (-25pts), Bootle (-25pts), Blaenau Gwent and Rhymney (-25pts), Knowsley (-24pts), and Glenrothes and Mid Fife (-24pts).
Labour’s regional vote share falls by an average of eight points in the South East to 16 points in the North East. Keir Starmer’s party remain the largest in terms of seats in only London and are the North West (although in the latter case joint with Reform UK).
The performance of other parties
Under our model, the Conservatives would lose 69 seats to Reform, 11 to the Liberal Democrats, and one to the SNP. Their only bright spot would be picking up six Labour seats, as noted above.
While the party would be seriously depleted, heavyweights such as Kemi Badenoch, Robert Jenrick, and Rishi Sunak would retain their seats, although 2024 leadership challenger James Cleverly would lose to Reform in Braintree. The Liberal Democrats would also take former chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s seat of Godalming and Ash at the second time of asking.
The Lib Dems’ additional gains come almost exclusively at the hands of the Conservatives, with all but one being wrested from the Tories.
Meanwhile, the three Green gains would be Bristol East, Bristol South, and Huddersfield, and Plaid’s additional trio are Bangor Aberconwy, Cardiff West, and Pontypridd.
A note at this stage should be made about the performance of other, smaller parties and independent candidates. The MRP at the moment expects that we would only see three such candidates (plus the Speaker) win a constituency contest if an election were being held now. However, the model is currently not asking for specific candidate names, so it will likely be underestimating the specific popularity of specific independent candidates in seats they already hold.
How far could tactical voting reduce Labour’s losses?
If we approach an actual election with a voting intention narrative similar to the one outlined in this MRP, one of the key considerations will be the extent to which a possible Reform victory might prompt tactical voting on the left, which previous YouGov research has indicated would occur.
We can use the results of the MRP to see how far such voting could stymy Labour’s losses: in the 194 seats that the party are currently losing to Reform, the combined vote share of all Labour, Lib Dem and Green votes would be enough to prevent a victory for Farage’s party in all but five.
This is a purely illustrative example, however, as it should not be expected that the entirety of voters for other parties would be willing to lend their vote to Labour.
However, this is not necessarily so much a tactical voting story, as perhaps a demonstration of the fragmentation of Labour’s voter coalition since 2024 (whereby the party has lost many more voters to its left than its right), and one of the routes they could approach to putting together an active, rather than tactical, voter base for the next election.
Record numbers of seats are being won on small proportions of the vote, making for a more uncertain seat tally than previous elections
Reform’s ‘win’ in this hypothetical election (in terms of becoming the largest party) is a relatively efficient one, with their 26% of the British vote translating into winning around 42% of seats.
While this is an impressive ratio, it is less so than Labour’s was at the 2024 election, when they managed to translate a 35% share of the British vote into 65% of seats.
This highlights an important characteristic of this hypothetical election: that seats are being won by increasingly small shares of the vote and by increasingly small margins.
In our MRP, constituencies are being won on an average of around 35% of the vote, and an average majority of 10 percentage points.
By contrast, in 2024, the average winning party share was around 40%, with an average majority size of 16 points, and in 2019 the winning share was comfortably over 50%, with an average majority of 26 percentage points.
Last year’s election saw Liz Truss notoriously lose her constituency of South West Norfolk to Labour’s Terry Jermy in a result which saw the lowest winning vote percentage total for any candidate in the whole election: 26.7%.
The lowest winning total in YouGov’s MRP projection today is 24% for Reform UK in Aylesbury. There are in fact no fewer than 143 constituencies in which the projected winner has under 30% of the vote.
And while Reform’s victory is an efficient one, it also rests on a high number of precariously close constituency results. The average margin of victory for Reform UK is seven percentage points, while for Labour it is 11 points and as high as 19 for the Liberal Democrats.
In fact, of Reform’s 271 projected constituency wins in our central scenario, they are ahead of their second-placed rivals by less than five percentage points in 103.
Taken altogether, this represents a volatile, uncertain, chaotic electoral landscape. It is one where the electorate fragments further, the finishing post becomes even closer to the starting line, and British politics becomes even more divided.
See the full constituency results here
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