Dr Patrick English is Director of Political Analytics at YouGov, and their spokesman on political research.
Nigel Farage has won the August 2026 by-election in the parliamentary constituency of Clacton which he himself triggered in order to ‘put to the people’ the question of his conduct around financial donations and declarations. Farage won over 1000 more votes than he did in the seat at the 2024 General Election, sweeping to victory against Count Binface in a contest which all other major parties boycotted.
What, if anything, can we learn from that? And how does it relate to the national polling landscape?
Clacton is a constituency which by any cut of the data is one of the most political right-leaning areas in the whole of the country, and demographically one of the most Reform-friendly seats going.
If Farage and Reform were to design their perfect seat to fight, it wouldn’t be far off the 75 per cent Leave voting, 96 per cent white, 30 per cent aged 65 and over (the national average is 19 per cent), 56 per cent lower socio-economic class reality that we find… in Clacton-on-Sea.
Nigel Farage’s victory here is made entirely unsurprising by all that. It is a seat which by all indications, and the fact he faced no competition from any major political party, he should have comfortably won. And indeed he did.
But Clacton is extremely atypical, not much like the rest of the country. And beyond what happened yesterday in the very specific context of this by-election in Clacton, the public have already been slowly but surely delivering their verdict on Farage’s conduct of late – and it does not make pretty reading for the Reform leader.
Firstly, headline vote intention for Reform has been dropping since around about the turn of the year. According to some polling houses, Reform enjoyed a lead over their nearest rivals (either Labour or the Conservatives) of anything up to 15 percentage points in October 2025.
By mid-July, that lead had completely evaporated, and now most polls will tell you either that there is a dead heat with Labour perhaps slightly ahead, or that there is an outright Labour lead.
This is quite an unwelcome change for a party who posted stellar performances at both the 2025 and 2026 local and devolved parliament elections, and who enjoyed a polling lead which up until a month ago had lasted no fewer than 16 months.
But even beneath these polling leads and election successes, there were signs that Reform were vulnerable and could be thwarted by a coalescing of voters against them.
In both each of the Senedd Caerphilly, Gorton and Denton, and Makerfield parliamentary by-elections, Reform began the campaigns bullish about their chances in what looked like favourable contests for an insurgent party taking on the party of government. In each contest, they lost. Huge numbers of voters moved behind the party they deemed best placed to defeat Reform, and left Farage and his party ultimately nowhere near victory.
The same thing again happened in Wales in the 2026 Senedd election, with voters moving behind Plaid Cymru to deliver a handsome win for Rhun ap Iorwerth and his party and pushing Reform into a distant second.
This anti-Reform mobilisation would not have been a surprise to anyone paying close attention to the underlying numbers around Farage and his party. Even at the peak of their polling powers, you could always find twice as many Brits who had an unfavourable opinion of Nigel Farage as had a favourable one.
On the 27th of October 2025, we at YouGov recorded a 10 point vote intention lead for Reform UK. That month, we also reported that while 30 per cent of the public had a favourable view of Nigel Farage, 63 per cent had an unfavourable opinion.
Not only has Reform’s position in the polls has drifted downward since then, but so have Farage’s own personal ratings. According to our latest published data in July this year, while 22 per cent of the public continue to have a positive view of Nigel Farage, 68 per cent now have a negative opinion.
We can speculate as to what precisely might have caused these downturns in public opinion for both Farage and his party, with negative stories around undeclared gifts and payments and accusations of dodgy financial dealings almost certainly playing a part. The by-election itself as well and perceptions around its necessity also cannot be doing any favours in this regard.
So intrinsically linked to Reform is Farage and Farage to Reform, the two appear to move in lockstep together in the court of public opinion, as we can see from the graphic below. Since May last year, support for both the man and the party have been on a steady, mirrored decline.
In terms of net favourability scores (the percentage of the public who have a positive view on a person/party minus the percentage who have a negative view), our July data recorded Farage at -46 and Reform UK only just ahead at -38. This polling proximity is far from the norm; the Labour Party regularly outpolled Keir Starmer on favourability while he was in office. Now, net Labour favourability sits at -25 while Burnham’s is far higher, at +12. Kemi Badenoch also significantly outperforms her party, with a net favourability score of -11 compared to -33 for her party. Reform and Farage’s relationship is so much closer.
Nonetheless, it is not all bad news for Reform and their position with the British public. After all, despite a notable and symbolic slide from a clear first into a nip-and-tuck second place, the party are nonetheless still in striking distance of taking the lead once more.
Secondly, they still dominate the competition in terms of public opinion on who would ‘best handle’ the issue of immigration, which remains a top two (if not the top) concern among the British public. According to our August tracker data, 3-in-10 Brits believe Reform would best handle the issue, with their next closest rivals in this regard being Labour down at 16 per cent.
Being so clearly ahead on a top order issue for the public is always a good position for a party to be in, and one which will likely arrest any potential decline into distant third-place position for the near future at least. And the party will no doubt ride the crest of their self-created wave/lick their wounds today and into the weekend.