26 October 2026 - 2:00pm
The Conservatives have overtaken Reform UK in the Economist’s polling tracker for the first time since January 2025. After two years in the political wilderness, Kemi Badenoch’s party can once again make a claim to be the leading force on the Right. Nigel Farage’s route to Downing Street — or even Leader of the Opposition — now looks rather less straightforward.
Other pollsters tell a similar story. YouGov puts the Conservatives on 23%, narrowly ahead of Reform on 22%, while Ipsos gives the Tories a four-point lead, at 24% to 20%. For the first time since the Partygate scandal, the Tories have something to celebrate. Within reason.
Badenoch has, after all, merely dragged her party back to its disastrous 2024 election result. This is hardly evidence of a grateful nation clamouring for its return. The Conservatives have climbed from a very low level of support to a slightly less dismal one. Badenoch should probably keep the champagne on ice.
But this isn’t simply a story of prodigal Tories coming home after a brief flirtation with Reform. According to the Economist’s tracker, Reform attracted 34% of 2024 Conservative voters at its September 2025 peak. That figure is now 24%. Conservative support among the same group has risen from 58% to 67%. There has been a recovery, but otherwise a third of those who backed the Tories even in their 2024 electoral humiliation have yet to return.
But something more interesting is happening to Farage’s coalition. The Economist’s tracker suggests that, among people who did not vote in 2024, Reform’s support has fallen from 63% at its peak to 26%; Labour now attracts 22% of that group. The party of the disaffected is now losing its grip on the disaffected.
Then there is Rupert Lowe. YouGov finds that 14% of Reform’s 2024 voters now back Restore Britain, compared with just 9% who support the Conservatives. These are Reform’s original voters, not the wider pool of supporters who jumped on the bandwagon last year. Yet even here, Farage faces competition. The man who once delighted in splitting the Tory vote now finds himself squeezed between the party he wants to destroy and his erstwhile colleague Rupert Lowe.
This is where a modest Conservative recovery could become a much bigger problem for Reform. Farage needs to hold together voters who want a radical Right-wing party and voters who simply want the party most likely to remove Labour. These ambitions overlap, but they are not identical.
If the Conservatives establish themselves as the more credible challenger, some voters could decide that Badenoch offers the best chance of getting Labour out. National polling will not settle every constituency contest, but it will shape perceptions of which party can win and influence tactical voting.
Meanwhile, voters who want the full-fat version of radical Right-wing politics could look towards Lowe. If Reform no longer seems likely to win anyway, why compromise? Restore does not need to replace Farage’s party to damage it. Taking a few crucial percentage points could be enough.
The danger is that these losses reinforce each other. Every voter departing for Restore makes Reform look less competitive; every voter returning to the Tories weakens the argument for choosing Farage over a more ideologically satisfying alternative. The Conservatives do not need to become popular to make this happen — they only need to become more plausible than Reform.
For years, Farage made himself the spoiler who could wreck Conservative ambitions. Now Lowe threatens to perform the same service for him. The irony is delicious, but for Reform, the consequences could be rather less amusing.
