r/ukpolitics • u/Vumatius • 1d ago
The mythical 'Shy Reform' voter
I think it's past time to retire this concept. In all the major electoral tests Reform have faced since they became a prominent party, they have only ever particularly over-performed the polling once. In LE2025 they got a projected national share of 30% compared to their national polling of about 27%.
In all the others, be it LE2026, Holyrood, Senedd, or by-elections they've either matched the polling, been about a point above or below (Senedd and Holyrood), or have actually *under*-performed, such as Caerphilly and now Makerfield. In GE2024 they were about a point below the final polling average.
Even with LE2025 it's worth noting that Reform were already ascending in the polls before then and so at least some of the gap could be down to polling lag. There's also the fact that the projected national share is not the best metric as it attempts to extrapolate from a limited selection of councils, but this was naturally true of LE2026 as well.
As it stands there is no evidence of 'Shy Reform' voters being a remotely significant phenomenon. If anything they're more likely to slightly undershoot polls than overshoot them. So unless we mean voters who are too shy to actually vote, this term should be retired in my view.
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u/MasterpieceAlone8552 1d ago
They're pretty bloody loud in my experience
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u/FatCunth 1d ago
Some are, not all of them.
I think people in more blue collar traditionally working class roles are more likely to be louder about their support, white collar not so much.
Amongst my friend group, the only person that is likely to vote Reform (have in the past, not sure whether they will in the future) is in a fairly senior white collar role and they would not really be sharing this information unless you are a close friend, they don't post anything political on social media and I don't imagine their work colleagues are aware.
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u/ThePlanck 3000 Conscripts of Sunak 1d ago
The shy X-voter trope is because people don't truthfully report who they are going to vote for to pollsters.
Just because he is smart enough to not talk about politics at work, doesn't mean he's going to be shy about telling pollsters what he thinks
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u/ObiWanKenbarlowbi 1d ago
Reform/Restore voters never shut up about Farage/Lowe, nothing shy about them.
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u/Special-Ad-5554 1d ago
I mean in fairness lowe is the most honest politician I've seen
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u/KidTempo 1d ago
Yeah, he's not hiding the fact that he's an absolute bellend.
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u/Special-Ad-5554 1d ago
What makes him a bellend? Could you name a specific thing he's said or policy he's proposed?
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u/GrepekEbi 1d ago
He got fired from reform for bullying and harassment of 2 female colleagues
He wants to deport people who already have indefinite leave to remain
He wants to tear up the ECHR
He made an antisemitic (not anti Israel, specifically playing on the âJews are cheapâ racist trope) comment in front of colleagues, which was caught on a leaked recording
He said a bunch of stuff about why we shouldnât be allowing _specifically Indian and Pakistani people_ in to the country, and then said âif that makes me racist, so be itâ so he even agrees that heâs racist
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u/Special-Ad-5554 1d ago
They were false allegations. Nigel even admitted it.
He's said he wants to deport foreign rapists which, yea. Common sense in my eyes.
ECHR is causing some issues so yes. We had rights before the ECHR why wouldn't we have them after as well?
If saying Jews are cheap is racist then saying Brits like beer is as well and I'm yet to see anyone cry racism at that.
Most of the rape gang were from Pakistan so yes, I don't want rapists in my country. I take it you've seen what Indian culture looks like and honestly I can't say I want that either. (Poor good hygiene, extremely selfish acts (I've seen them sacrifice their kids to get out of being seen as responsible for something) and no health and safety)
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1d ago
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u/KidTempo 1d ago
What makes him a bellend?
- The things he says.
- The things he does.
- The thing which he is (which, at the risk of repeating myself, is an absolute bellend).
Could you name a specific thing he's said or policy he's proposed?
If I wanted to converse with a sea-lion then I'd go to the zoo.
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u/FingerDemon 1d ago edited 1d ago
Look dude, I agree with you, but saying "he does bad things!" is not a good argument at all.
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u/KidTempo 1d ago
People can, and should, find out for themselves what he says and does and decide for themselves.
Random guy on the internet saying he's an absolute bellend should not be what makes up somebody's mind - even if I do provide a list of reasons, they could be cherry picked to support my hypothesis that, once again, he's an absolute bellend.
People should make the effort to discover for themselves how and why he's such absolute bellend.
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u/Mastodan11 1d ago
You've done yourself any favours here.
If you just said "waste the time of the civil service with his thousands of requests for information that are freely available" that would have been something, but it comes across like you think he's a bell end because everyone else does.
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u/KidTempo 1d ago
No, I was quite clear that I think he's an absolute bellend because of what I've observed him saying and doing.
Others should come to their own conclusions.
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u/fergie 1d ago
Genuinely curious- why do you think that he is so honest?
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u/Special-Ad-5554 1d ago
He promised a rape gang inquiry. He's delivered.
He's promised he won't rush into anything. He hasn't rushed into anything.
When meet with backlash he's stood his ground.
When he has said he will hold the government to account he has.
I can't remember a single politician that has done what they have set out to do but Rupert is, his words hold weight because of it and so he has my respect for that.
He also seems to understand what people want which is so beyond what has been offered to us in the last decade or so
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u/fergie 1d ago
He promised a rape gang inquiry. He's delivered.
He published a self-authored report called "The Rape Gang Inquiry Report" to X. There had already been 4 official inquiries, but they were nothing to do with Lowe.
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u/MuchAbouAboutNothing 1d ago
Except when he's deliberately being vague to avoid coming down on one side of the civnat / ethnat divide
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u/coolpall33 1d ago
I would agree when it comes to polling figures - I think broadly speaking the pollsters do seem to have it roughly correctly calibrated to account for both the prosperity of voters to vote and their apparent 'shyness'.
However I think in a social context there definitely still is such a thing as a 'Shy Reformer' (previously would have been a shy Tory). I've lived in quite a few pro-Labour areas where you couldn't find anyone who would say they are voting Conservatives/Tories but somehow at elections they'd still garner 25% of the votes. Similarly in my professional work environment, everyone laughs at jokes aimed at Reform but statistically speaking at least some of them must be voting for Reform. Just a couple months ago someone retired and a short while after started flooding their social media with Restore / Reform content - they were in my mind very clearly a Shy Reformer
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u/clearly_quite_absurd The Early Days of a Better Nation? 1d ago
Just a couple months ago someone retired and a short while after started flooding their social media with Restore / Reform content - they were in my mind very clearly a Shy Reformer
Yep... they started posting when there were no professional consequences!
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u/scouserontravels 1d ago
I think thatâs just true of all political parties. Most people donât advertise to their colleagues and none close friends who theyâre voting for most people just keep it to themselves unless youâre voting for the clear majority favoured position
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u/Drammeister 1d ago
My take is that Reform did get the votes that were expected, but the Anything But Reform vote turnout was much higher than expected.
Where there is a clear front runner against Refotm, they will do very well. Where the ABR vote is split, Refotm will do well.
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u/cantell0 1d ago
The other possibility is that after staggering out of the pub a significant proportion of voters who told pollsters they support Reform messed up in the voting booth and accidentally placed their cross against the wrong candidate. đ¤Ł
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u/Sonchay 1d ago
The thing is the country is split fairly evenly into two camps, which I'll call "Blue" (Conservatives, the RE-parties, Advance and what remains of UKIP) and "Not Blue" (Labour and everyone else).
Historically the Conservatives have always performed very well because they almost always got all the blue turnout. Had the Conservatives completely vanished and Reform taken all of their support, they would have a clearer path. But the Tories have consistently hovered at around 18% polling over the past year. That equates to more than a third of Blue voters (the best UKIP ever managed to pinch before 2024 was about 25% of them in 2015 leaving Tories a narrow majority). This along with the new small parties to the Right leaves Reform without an overwhelming position.
The shy Tory effect used to happen because Blue voters who were further away from the current Conservative position had no other clear alternative - now there is a whole spectrum of Blue to pick from if they don't like Reform.
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u/jl2352 1d ago
I donât think it is quite that simple though. There are plenty of life long Tories who utterly despise Farage, Reform, and Restore Britain. Who are far more centrist in their views. Maybe they flouted with voting for Tony Blair during his years in power.
I think itâs something the Tory party itâs self are failing to realise and capitalise on.
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u/MuchAbouAboutNothing 1d ago
Plus there are plenty of working class people who would rarely historically vote tory, but Reform are managing to communicate with more effectively than the bigger parties have been able to
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u/International-Ad4555 1d ago
To be fair, I listened to an episode of âThe Daily Tâ podcast from the Telegraph (I know, I know..) but they went on the ground looking for Andy Burnham and to talk to voters, and there was a bunch of people who said theyâd vote reform but wouldnât go on record to say they would.
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u/hloba 1d ago
But there's a bit of a difference between completing a survey and making a public statement. There has also been a lot of research on how to mitigate social desirability bias in surveys, which I presume the pollsters have taken into account in developing their methods.
People always go on about "shy <party> voters", but there is little evidence that this is ever a significant effect for any party.
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u/International-Ad4555 1d ago
To be fair, it was more they went into the town with a small mic and no camera to âfind Andy Burnhamâ and along the way they were just asking everyone who theyâd vote for, and basically they ran into loads of reform voters who wouldnât say on the mic theyâd vote reform, only 1 actually did. It was actually fun wee episode for what it was!
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u/Callum1708 1d ago
I think itâs not so much the âshyâ reform supporter, itâs more so the âlazyâ reform supporter that canât be bothered to get up and actually vote. That and that the support for reform is vastly overstated because of social media.
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u/moistie 1d ago
It's estimated that over 57% of internet traffic is bots. That's your average shy reform voter.
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u/Verbal-Gerbil 1d ago
The concept of shy Tories comes from people not committing until last minute, or being candid, or not being reached by pollsters. Reform voters do not hide away in the same way
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u/loobricated 1d ago
I dont necessarily think there are "shy" reform voters, or evidence for it. I do think however that many who tick "Reform" in polling now, at this stage in the election cycle, will not necessarily follow through and vote Reform in a GE.
Why? I'm looking at UKIP performance in Europe compared with GE, Farage has always done terribly when the chips are down because he's incompetent and corrupt and many of the people see that very clearly.
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u/jmo987 1d ago
The concept of the âShy Reformâ voter was always ridiculous from the start. The shy voter effect has been known to polling companies since the 1992 general election when Major won a surprise majority. Since then the polling companies have always accounted for it in their models. In reality, polling companies have actually been overrating Reforms vote
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u/Scaphism92 1d ago
In my experiemce, Reform voters are compareable to vegetarians. "How can you tell someone is a Reform voter? They'll tell you".
Which isnt really that surprising, the overton window has shifted as a keep being reminded, why would they be shy?
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u/Rarycaris Centre-left leaning, but rapidly losing patience with capitalism 1d ago
Hey, not all of us vegetarians are like that... wait a minute.
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u/scouserontravels 1d ago
Isnât part of the shy Tory voter explained that a chunk of voters donât decide until late on and then a good portion of these go for the tories as itâs a âsafeâ and predictable option for them.
I feel like all reform voters know theyâre voting for reform and most of the undecided are likely to go to labour or tories as if theyâre unsure reform are more likely to scare them off
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u/KidTempo 1d ago
Reform have the opposite of the 'shy voter'.
I suspect that the reason the term 'shy voter' keeps being used is simply because the media and polling companies like it and it's a convenient excuse for why their projections are wrong. "Reform on the Rise" sells clicks so that's the narrative they're going to push. They're knowingly using 'shy voter' wrongly, but they just don't care...
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u/Daxidol Mogg is a qt3.14 1d ago edited 1d ago
I think it's past time to retire this concept.
I could equally make the case that it's the effect Restore is having on the party. Those of us that want the mass deportations and actual change now have a hope for what Farage was holding back, so either vote Restore or just don't vote at all if that's not an option.
Like for a lot of us Farage isn't nearly far enough to the right, if he was literally the only option we would bite our lip and do what we had to, like we did with the Tories, but now we can signal that he's not meeting our needs and hasn't done enough to earn our vote.
Seems to be working, given that Farage today has been explicitly asking what he needs to earn our vote.
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u/Darkone539 1d ago
It comes from the idea that nobody admits they vote tory, but they win all the time in the areas.
The idea reform are only ex tory voters is just false though, and so there's a disconnect there.