Meanwhile, Reform UK appears on the electoral map for the first time and is expected to take five seats from the Conservatives, including the seaside town of Clacton, where Farage is running.
At the upper end of the model’s confidence interval, his party could win 17 seats. This is quite a big leap considering the party’s predecessor, the Brexit Party, won no seats in 2019, and YouGov’s last model, which used data before Farage’s announcement, predicted the reforms would not win any seats. no see.
The MRP model estimates the relationship between voter characteristics and voting intentions. We then use constituency-level data to predict the outcome of seats based on the types of voters who live there if a general election were held today. This MRP is even more special in that the names of actual candidates in each constituency are included in the survey questions, which was not possible in the previous version.
The expected changes to the electoral map are stark, with many of the 365 seats won by the Conservatives in 2019 replaced by a sea of red. The latest MRP also shows some bright mint blue stains in the form of English reform seats.
In addition to Reform UK, the Liberal Democrats are expected to be the big winners, having increased their number of seats by six times compared to the 2019 general election result.
Building on this model, Reform UK became the third most popular party, with 15% of the national vote. However, in the UK’s First-Past-Post system this does not translate into winning a third of the seats. In fact, of the five seats the party is expected to win, only Farage’s seat is safe..
