The bounce Reform UK experienced after its historic local election gains three weeks ago has fully reversed, with the latest YouGov poll conducted on 17-18 May placing the party at 25% – three points down from the 28% peak recorded a week ago and back precisely where Reform stood in the days before the elections. Meanwhile Labour has fallen to 17%, dropping below the Conservatives at 18% for what appears to be the first time, and Rupert Lowe’s new Restore Britain party makes a notable YouGov debut at 4%.
The polling, conducted for The Times and Sky News, provides the first clear read on whether Reform’s historic gains in the local elections represented a durable shift in public opinion or a temporary uplift that has since been absorbed back into the pre-election baseline.
The full figures
YouGov Westminster voting intention, 17-18 May 2026:
- Reform UK: 25% (-3 from 10-11 May)
- Conservatives: 18% (+1)
- Labour: 17% (+1)
- Greens: 15% (-1)
- Lib Dems: 14% (+1)
- Restore Britain: 4% (+1)
- SNP: 3% (=)
- Plaid Cymru: 1% (-1)
- Your Party: 0% (=)
The bounce that wasn’t
The polling history tells a specific story. In the days immediately before the local elections – the YouGov poll conducted 4-5 May – Reform stood at 25%. Following their historic gains, winning more than 1,440 council seats as we reported in our full election results coverage, the party’s support jumped to 28% in the following poll conducted 10-11 May.
That three-point post-election bounce has now been entirely reversed. Reform is back at exactly the same figure it recorded before the elections took place. The local elections produced the largest gains in the party’s history. They did not produce a sustainable increase in polling support.
The Harborne question
The timing matters. The period between the peak 28% and the return to 25% is also the period in which the financial questions surrounding Farage have intensified significantly.
The Parliamentary Standards Commissioner confirmed a formal investigation into the undeclared £5 million gift from Christopher Harborne, as we reported in our investigation piece. Sky News revealed Farage had purchased a £1.4 million property in cash in the weeks between receiving the gift and announcing he would stand for parliament, as we reported in our property purchase piece. Farage’s spokesperson said the property was paid for with I’m A Celebrity money – a claim then challenged by his company’s own accounts, as we reported in our FT accounts analysis. And Elon Musk called Farage a liar after Farage claimed Musk had tried to buy his public statements, as we reported in our Musk-Farage row piece.
Whether the financial questions are directly responsible for the three-point drop or whether the drop represents a simple return to baseline after a post-election bounce is difficult to establish from a single poll. What is clear is that the questions have not generated any positive polling momentum and that the party’s support has returned to exactly its pre-election level.
Labour below the Conservatives
The most striking individual figure in the poll is Labour at 17% – one point below the Conservatives at 18%. The party that won a 170-seat majority with 33.7% of the vote less than two years ago is currently polling below its principal rival, below the Greens and below Reform by eight points.
This is not a number that existed before the May 7 elections. The pre-election poll had Labour at 18% and the Conservatives at 17%. Labour’s post-election collapse in the wake of its catastrophic local election results – as we reported in our full coverage of the 90+ MPs calling for Starmer to resign, Wes Streeting’s resignation and the broader leadership crisis – has pushed the party below its main parliamentary rival for the first time.
The specific implication of the 17% figure is for the Labour leadership contest. Any new Labour leader begins their tenure facing a party polling at 17% – a figure that requires approximately doubling to form a majority government at a general election. As we explored in our analysis of why changing prime ministers doesn’t fix the underlying problem, no personnel change addresses the structural challenges producing these figures.
Restore Britain at 4%
The entry of Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain party at 4% in YouGov polling is itself significant. A new party achieving 4% in a national poll within weeks of its official launch is unusually fast progress. It suggests that the political space to the right of Reform – and the Reform-adjacent space occupied by Elon Musk’s endorsement, Tommy Robinson’s movement and the more explicitly cultural nationalist wing of British populism, as we covered in our Led By Donkeys and Tommy Robinson march piece – has sufficient depth to support a second right-wing party.
The relationship between Restore Britain’s rise and Reform’s three-point drop is worth noting. If Restore Britain is drawing voters from the harder-right edge of Reform’s coalition, Reform’s headline figures may continue to compress even as its core support remains solid.
Your Party – the party formed by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana as we noted in our Jim O’Boyle piece – registers at 0% in YouGov’s current tracking.
The Makerfield context
The poll will be studied carefully by both the Burnham campaign team and by Farage ahead of the Makerfield byelection, as we reported in our full Makerfield analysis. Reform won 50.4% across Makerfield’s wards at the local elections. In national polling, they are at 25% – three points below their post-election peak.
Whether that three-point drop is visible in Makerfield specifically, or whether the constituency’s local dynamics follow their own trajectory independent of national polling movements, will be one of the central questions of the byelection campaign.
Reform still leads every other party by seven points. It is still the most likely single party to win the most seats at the next general election under any proportional calculation. But the bounce is over – and the questions that accompanied its reversal are not going away.
