Nigel Farage’s Reform UK has slipped into third place in a new YouGov poll as Kemi Badenoch’s Conservatives enjoy their strongest showing with the pollster since she became party leader.
The latest voting intention figures put Labour narrowly ahead on 24 per cent, with the Conservatives just one point behind on 23 per cent and Reform falling to 21 per cent.
The Liberal Democrats are on 12 per cent and the Greens on 11 per cent, leaving all three of Britain’s largest parties separated by just three points.
For Badenoch, the result provides further evidence of a post-conference recovery after months in which the Conservatives had struggled to compete with Reform for voters on the right. The Tories have gained three points compared with YouGov’s previous poll, while Reform has fallen one point and Labour has dropped three.
It is Reform’s lowest YouGov score since the aftermath of the 2024 general election and represents a considerable reversal from earlier this year, when Farage’s party was regularly leading national voting intention surveys and at times polling around 28 per cent.
Conservatives get another conference bounce
The movement follows the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham, where Badenoch attempted to draw a clearer dividing line with both Labour and Reform.
Her announcements included plans to exempt family homes from inheritance tax, halve employer National Insurance for younger workers and pursue significant reductions in government spending. She also used her conference speech to directly appeal to voters who abandoned the Conservatives for Reform at the last election.
That appeal appears to have had at least some immediate effect.
The Conservatives were on 19 per cent in YouGov polling at the end of September, when Reform led on 25 per cent and Labour stood on 24 per cent. The latest figures therefore leave Badenoch’s party four points higher than it was before conference while Reform has fallen four points over roughly two weeks.
A separate Opinium poll published over the weekend also detected a Conservative conference bounce, putting the party up three points to 20 per cent. In that survey Labour remained further ahead on 29 per cent, with Reform on 23 per cent.
The two pollsters produce different headline numbers, but both have now recorded the same broad movement: the Conservatives gaining ground while Reform falls back.
Reform has fallen sharply from its summer highs
The latest result will be more uncomfortable for Farage because Reform spent much of 2026 appearing to have decisively overtaken the Conservatives as the dominant party on the British right.
YouGov’s large voter study earlier this year found that immigration had been crucial to Reform’s rise but also identified a significant part of the party’s coalition as potentially receptive to returning to the Conservatives.
That has always been Badenoch’s opportunity.
Rather than trying to build an entirely new electoral coalition, the Conservatives need to persuade enough former Tory voters that Reform is no longer the only credible vehicle for opposition to Labour.
The gap between them has now disappeared in some polls and reversed in this one.
At the end of June, YouGov had Reform on 24 per cent while Labour and the Conservatives were both on 20 per cent. Reform remained ahead when Burnham replaced Keir Starmer in July and continued reaching 23 and 24 per cent through much of August.
By 20-21 September, however, YouGov had Labour on 23 per cent with both Reform and the Conservatives tied on 21 per cent.
Reform briefly recovered to 25 per cent at the end of September, putting the party narrowly back ahead of Labour, but that rebound has now disappeared.
Labour is still first, but its own conference bounce has faded
There is less comfortable news for Labour in the same poll.
Andy Burnham’s party remains in first place, but only just. Labour has fallen three points from the 27 per cent YouGov recorded following its conference, leaving it only one point ahead of Badenoch.
That means the latest YouGov numbers look considerably tighter than the Opinium poll published over the weekend, which gave Labour a six-point advantage over Reform and a nine-point lead over the Conservatives.
Labour can still point to how far it has recovered since the final months of Keir Starmer’s premiership. YouGov recorded the party as low as 16 per cent in May, when the Greens were beginning to challenge Labour directly for progressive voters and Reform had established a substantial national lead.
Burnham’s arrival in Downing Street produced an immediate improvement, with Labour reaching 24 per cent in YouGov polling by August.
His conference delivered another boost, but the latest result suggests at least part of that movement may have been temporary.
Badenoch records her best YouGov position as Tory leader
For the Conservatives, reaching 23 per cent is psychologically significant after a period in which questions were being asked about whether Reform could permanently replace the party as the main force on the British right.
Badenoch inherited a party that had suffered its worst general election result in modern history and then watched Farage capitalise on Conservative weakness throughout 2025 and the first half of 2026.
Her strategy at conference was noticeably more confrontational towards Reform. Rather than treating Farage primarily as an ally on issues such as immigration and tax, Badenoch attacked the party’s record, questioned whether it was ready to govern and appealed directly to voters who had abandoned the Conservatives.
She also told the party to prepare for a general election “at any point”, despite Burnham repeatedly insisting he has no intention of calling an early contest.
The latest figures give Badenoch some evidence that her argument is beginning to land, although one poll immediately after conference cannot establish whether the change will last.
Conference bounces frequently fade once political attention moves elsewhere, and YouGov’s three largest parties are now so close that relatively small changes could alter their positions from one survey to the next.
A remarkable change from only two weeks ago
The speed of the movement is particularly striking when the latest figures are compared with YouGov’s poll from 27 and 28 September.
At that point Reform was first on 25 per cent, Labour followed on 24 per cent and the Conservatives were considerably further behind on 19 per cent.
Two weeks later, Labour remains on exactly the same 24 per cent while the parties behind it have effectively swapped places. The Conservatives have risen from 19 to 23 per cent and Reform has fallen from 25 to 21 per cent.
That does not mean four points of Reform support have simply moved directly to Badenoch. Voters can move between several parties or into and out of the undecided column, and changes of this size should not automatically be interpreted as direct transfers without detailed voter-flow data.
It does, however, leave Farage facing a political challenge that looked much less urgent during the summer.
Reform’s argument that it had permanently overtaken the Conservatives rested heavily on sustained polling evidence showing it ahead of Badenoch’s party. The latest YouGov figures put the Conservatives back above Reform for the first time in the current post-conference period, while Labour retains the narrowest of national leads.
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