Meanwhile, Reform U.K. makes its first appearance on the electoral map, projected to take five seats from the Conservatives, including the seaside town of Clacton where Farage is running.
On the upper end of the model’s confidence intervals, his party could even stand to win 17 seats. That’s quite the jump given the party’s precursor, the Brexit Party, won no seats in 2019 and Reform wasn’t projected to win any in YouGov’s last model — which used data from before Farage announced.
The MRP model estimates the relationship between voters’ characteristics and their vote intention. It then uses constituency-level data to project seat outcomes, if the general election was held now, based on the types of voters who live there. This latest MRP is additionally special as the names of actual candidates in each constituency were included in the survey question, which was not possible in previous iterations.
The projected change in the electoral map is stark, with a sea of red replacing many of the 365 seats the Conservatives won in 2019. The latest MRP also shows a few specks of bright minty blue in the form of Reform U.K. seats.
In addition to Reform U.K., the projections show the Lib Dems as big winners, increasing their seat number by a factor of 6 when compared to the 2019 general election results.
Reform U.K.’s implied national vote share based on the model is 15 percent, making it the third most popular party. However, in the U.K.’s first-past-the-post system this does not translate to winning a third of the seats up for grabs. In fact, of the five seats the party is projected to win, only Farage’s is safe.
