30 October 2025
Analysis
A flash in a pan or sustained fire? Reform vs previous insurgent parties
Will Reform be a short lived phenomenon, or part of the political landscape for years to come? We compare their performance and future prospects to previous insurgent parties. Many parties have come and gone after making the promise of change - the SPD, CUK, UKIP, the Brexit Party.
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A flash in a pan or sustained fire? Reform vs previous insurgent parties - Analysis
Will Reform be a short lived phenomenon, or part of the political landscape for years to come? We compare their performance and future prospects to previous insurgent parties. Many parties have come and gone after making the promise of change - the SPD, CUK, UKIP, the Brexit Party. It can certainly be argued UKIP and the Brexit Party live on in Reform, while the others have largely faded away. Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. So how does Reform’s start and current performance compare to the others parties? To find out, we’ll look at polling, elections, by-elections, councillors, and regionals results. Polling First 100 days - it’s interesting to note that Reform didn’t take off early on, unlike the Brexit Party. Reform wouldn’t start to poll well until about a year after its launch Poll Leads In the run up to the 1983 GE, the SDP-Liberal Alliance led polls a many times, even reaching over 50% once. Their best streak of leads was around 10 polls. BXP also led a handful of polls, with a best of around 3 polls in a row. Currently, Reform have led 152 polls, for 157 days. Parliamentary By-Elections The SDP-Liberal Alliance, UKIP, and Reform have all won Westminster by-elections SDP-Liberal Alliance won 5 parliamentary by-elections from 1981-1988, driven largely by public disillusionment with both Labour and the Conservatives. UKIP won 2 by-elections - both times the UKIP candidate was the former Conservative MP of the seat, who had defected to UKIP and then resigned as a MP in order to contest the seat. Reform has won one by-election, which was also the first of the current Parliament (59th). They had also unsuccessfully contested numerous other by-elections from 2021-2022.
This analysis examines UK political polling trends, seat projections, and election dynamics. PollCheck provides comprehensive coverage of Westminster elections, Scottish Parliament elections, and Welsh Senedd elections, tracking polling data from major UK pollsters including YouGov, Find Out Now, Opinium, More in Common, and others.
Our analysis uses uniform national swing (UNS) methodology to project seat outcomes based on current polling data. We provide free tools including seat calculators, interactive maps, and detailed polling trend visualizations to help understand UK political dynamics.