The Conservatives are back in second place. Will they stay there after the Budget?

What happened

A YouGov poll puts Labour on 27%, the Conservatives on 22% and Reform UK on 20%, the second poll in a row with Reform UK in third place.

Reform UK is third in a second poll in a row. A YouGov poll published on 27 October puts Labour on 27%, the Conservatives on 22% and Reform UK, the party led by Nigel Farage, on 20%. A week earlier YouGov had the Conservatives on 23% and Reform UK on 22%. YouGov first put the Conservatives ahead of Reform UK on 13 October, by 23% to 21%.

Ipsos found the same order. Its poll published on 25 October has Labour on 32%, the Conservatives on 24% and Reform UK on 20%. The Independent says it is the biggest Conservative lead over Reform UK since the 2024 general election.

Reform UK was the most popular party in the UK for almost 18 months, from March 2025 to August 2026. The Independent’s average of recent polls on 26 October still puts it second on 22%, one point above the Conservatives on 21%. In May Reform UK had 27% and the Conservatives 19%.

Both parties want second place. Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch told the BBC on 6 October that her party is “the only credible alternative to Labour“ and asked Reform UK voters to come back. The BBC reported that senior Conservatives hope a small lead over Reform UK would help them make that case. On 26 October Nigel Farage and Robert Jenrick, who speaks for Reform UK on money matters, presented the party’s own Budget plan to an almost empty hall.

Chancellor John Healey presents the government’s Budget on 28 October. Keiran Pedley, research director at Ipsos, said “The government faces a challenging Budget this coming week“. YouGov asks people how they would vote every week, and its poll of 2 November is the first taken fully after the Budget. Results usually come out the next day.

Sources: independent.co.uk

The Pattern

We looked for cases where a party in opposition had just moved into second place in a national poll, behind the governing party. We found nine such polls. Seven were by Ipsos in Britain in 1982 and 1983, when Labour and the Alliance of the Liberals and the Social Democratic Party fought for second place. Two were by EKOS in Canada in 2015, when the Liberals and the New Democrats did the same under Stephen Harper’s Conservative government.

The Read

The Conservatives have now stayed ahead of Reform UK in three YouGov polls in a row. YouGov first put them ahead on 13 October, and they kept second place in the next two weekly polls. Ipsos, a second pollster, found a four point gap on 25 October. In April 1982, by contrast, Labour and the Alliance swapped places four times in ten days.

There are reasons for doubt. The gap in the latest YouGov poll is two points, and in the earlier swaps small gaps lasted less often than big ones. Seven of the nine polls were by Ipsos in Britain within 15 months, with the same two parties, and none was by YouGov. The Independent’s average still has Reform UK one point above the Conservatives.