National opinion polls are underestimating Reform. The party turned out more voters than pollsters expected in the local elections. And so rather than 25 per cent, we might think Reform could actually be polling 30 percent.
If there were a general election today, it would throw the House of Commons into chaos. No two parties would have enough seats to command a majority. Reform would mostly eat into Labour’s numbers, but it would stymy a Tory recovery too.
Let’s say Reform, for argument’s sake, is on 30 percent. What is stopping the party from going higher? Ukip had a pretty firm ceiling: poor candidate selection and the spectre of unpalatable prejudice haunted Nigel Farage’s first parliamentary endeavour. Even though most voters actually sympathised with the Ukip messaging, the media coverage succeeded in painting the party as extreme. The assumption that similar issues would plague Reform’s rise is not a foolish one.
Below you can see when and how accusations of prejudice or racism have held parties back.
But when More in Common asked voters what’s stopping them from going Reform, most do not refer to this so-called spectre of prejudice. The assumption of the candidates being racist is holding back 15 per cent of voters from Reform. The party being too right wing? 17 per cent. Too divisive? Eight per cent. None of these are the primary detractions in the party’s numbers, though of course it is not insignificant. Even Labour’s efforts at painting the party as privatisers of the NHS turns off just nine per cent of the electorate.
See below for the biggest issue in the minds of Reform’s untapped voting bloc.
Farage’s association with Trump is dangerous to his appeal. Labour was reluctant in the Runcorn and Helsby by-election in fully associating the pair. This was a mistake: the Canadian Liberals and Australian Labor benefited from casting their opponents as Trump stooges, or in the very least, allies.
Trump should be used by Labour, and also the Conservatives, as an anti-Farage message. But perhaps this tells us something more interesting than all of that. Shouting “racist” is not quite the toxifying assault the permanently online may think it is. That attack doesn’t speak to Reform-maybes. “Trump’s poodle” would be the killer message; party of racists isn’t.
[See also: Joan Didion without her style]
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