Nigel Farage issued warning he could lose out on 60 seats at next election
Nigel Farage has been warned that tactical voting could have a significant impact on Reform UK’s performance at the next general election, with new analysis suggesting that the party could lose around 60 seats if voters coordinate behind whichever rival is best placed to defeat it.
The figure comes from Electoral Calculus, which says its latest tactical-voting analysis, based on polling conducted with Find Out Now, indicates that anti-Reform tactical voting could cost the party approximately 60 parliamentary seats. The analysis also found that around one-third of Labour voters would be prepared to vote Conservative in a constituency where doing so was seen as the most effective way of preventing a Reform candidate from winning.
The warning is significant because the current electoral environment is increasingly fragmented. Reform has built support among voters who previously backed the Conservatives and, in some areas, Labour, while the Conservatives, Labour, Liberal Democrats and Greens are also competing for overlapping groups of voters.
However, the 60-seat figure should not be treated as a forecast of the eventual election result. It is an estimate based on a particular voting scenario. The next general election is not currently taking place, and voting intentions, candidate selections, local campaigns and tactical behaviour can all change before polling day.
Why tactical voting matters
Britain’s first-past-the-post electoral system means that the number of seats won by a party does not necessarily correspond directly to its share of the national vote.
A party can receive a substantial percentage of votes nationally but lose individual constituencies where its support is spread relatively evenly and another party has a concentrated local base.
That makes tactical voting particularly important in closely fought constituencies.
Instead of voting for their preferred party, some voters may decide to support another candidate if they believe that candidate has the strongest chance of defeating a particular rival.
Electoral Calculus says its research points to a growing willingness among some voters to behave in this way when Reform is one of the main contenders. Its September analysis therefore provides a different picture from a simple national voting-intention poll.
This distinction is important. A national poll might show Reform with a certain percentage of support, but that percentage alone cannot determine how many parliamentary seats the party would eventually win.
YouGov finds growing tactical pressure
Separate research from YouGov, published on September 23, also found evidence of increased tactical voting against Reform UK.
In a hypothetical constituency where only Reform and Labour were considered viable contenders, 41% of respondents said they would support Labour, compared with 26% for Reform.
YouGov said this represented a five-point fall in support for Reform and a six-point increase for Labour compared with its February study.
The pattern was different in a hypothetical Reform-Conservative contest. YouGov found that 35% would back the Conservatives and 20% Reform.
The figures demonstrate how tactical voting can change depending on which parties are perceived to be competitive locally.
The same research found that 63% of Green voters and 68% of Liberal Democrat voters would back Labour tactically in a Labour-Reform contest. Among Labour voters, 43% said they would support the Conservatives tactically if the choice in their constituency came down to Reform versus the Conservatives.
These numbers do not mean that all those voters would ultimately behave in this way at a general election. They describe responses to hypothetical constituency scenarios.
Reform’s electoral position has changed
The warning comes after a period in which Reform UK has experienced considerable changes in its polling position.
Electoral Calculus’s September 2026 poll-of-polls currently puts Reform on approximately 23.8% of the projected national vote and gives the party 132 seats in its central model. Labour is projected on 25.4% and 266 seats, while the Conservatives are on 19.8% and 119 seats.
These numbers are themselves a model rather than an election result.
Another recent large-scale YouGov seat-by-seat model produced a different picture. It projected 241 seats for Labour, 130 for the Conservatives and 123 for Reform UK.
That model illustrates how sensitive Westminster seat projections can be to relatively small changes in voting patterns.
The difference between the various models is therefore important when considering claims about how many seats Reform could win or lose.
The rise of tactical voting
The latest research suggests that voters are increasingly considering the possibility of voting for a party other than their first preference.
YouGov found that in a constituency where the Conservatives and Reform were the only realistic contenders, 43% of Labour voters said they would support the Conservatives to prevent Reform from winning. Only 2% said they would do the opposite.
Among Liberal Democrat voters, 49% said they would vote Conservative in such a scenario, while Green voters were considerably less likely to abandon their own party.
This demonstrates one of the unusual features of the current political landscape.
Traditional party loyalties do not necessarily determine how voters behave when a constituency becomes a direct contest between two parties.
A Labour voter who strongly opposes Reform, for example, could potentially support a Conservative candidate in one constituency while voting Labour in another where Labour is the main challenger to Reform.
The same principle can apply to Liberal Democrat and Green voters.
A fragmented political map
The background to the debate is Britain’s increasingly fragmented electoral system.
The traditional dominance of Labour and the Conservatives has weakened, while Reform, the Liberal Democrats and Greens have expanded their presence in different parts of the country.
The 2026 local elections illustrated the scale of that change. Reform made major gains across English local government, while Labour and the Conservatives both lost substantial numbers of council seats. Reform also emerged as a significant force in the Scottish and Welsh elections.
The results do not directly determine what will happen at a future general election. Local elections involve different issues, turnout levels and voting patterns.
Nevertheless, they demonstrate that the UK’s electoral landscape is no longer dominated by a straightforward Labour-versus-Conservative contest.
That creates both opportunities and risks for Reform.
A fragmented field can allow a party to win constituencies with a relatively modest share of the vote if opponents divide their support. But the same fragmentation can work against Reform if Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrat or Green voters coordinate locally.
Farage faces a different kind of challenge
For Farage, the tactical-voting question is therefore not simply about whether Reform can maintain its national vote share.
The more important question for the party’s parliamentary prospects is how efficiently those votes are distributed across constituencies.
A party polling around the same national percentage can win very different numbers of seats depending on where its support is concentrated.
This is particularly relevant to Reform because the party is challenging established parties in areas with very different political histories.
Some constituencies are traditionally Conservative, others have long been Labour strongholds, while some are becoming highly competitive between several parties.
That makes constituency-level polling increasingly important.
Another study points to a larger possible effect
A separate Survation poll commissioned by 38 Degrees and reported by the Guardian examined a scenario in which voters chose the most viable anti-Reform candidate in their constituency.
The study, based on more than 8,000 respondents, estimated that Reform’s projected seat total could fall by around 90 seats under that particular tactical-voting scenario.
The model therefore illustrates how different assumptions about voter behaviour can produce dramatically different parliamentary outcomes.
The discrepancy between the 60-seat estimate from Electoral Calculus and the larger figure in the Survation-based analysis should not be interpreted as a contradiction about a fixed future result.
They examine different scenarios and use different modelling approaches.
The central message is that tactical voting can have a disproportionate effect under first-past-the-post.
What it means for the next election
The warning does not mean Reform is certain to lose 60 seats.
Nor does it establish that tactical voting will become widespread enough to produce the scenario described by Electoral Calculus.
Much can change before the next general election, including national polling, constituency-level campaigning, party leadership, candidate choices and the issues that dominate the campaign.
There is also uncertainty over whether voters who currently say they would vote tactically would actually do so when faced with a real ballot paper.
The latest evidence nevertheless highlights a potential obstacle for Farage’s party.
Reform’s national support may not translate automatically into parliamentary seats. If several rival parties remain competitive in the same constituencies, Reform could benefit from divided opposition. If voters instead coordinate behind a single challenger, the electoral mathematics could change substantially.
For now, the 60-seat warning is best understood as a scenario illustrating the power of tactical voting rather than a prediction of the next election.
The coming months will show whether Reform can maintain its support across the constituencies where it is challenging established parties, and whether voters remain willing to cross traditional party lines when they believe a particular candidate has the strongest chance of winning.
