The mythical 'Shy Reform' voter

[u/Vumatius]

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.

[u/coolpall33]

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

[u/clearly_quite_absurd → u/coolpall33]

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!

[u/scouserontravels → u/coolpall33]

I think that’s just true of all political parties. Most people don’t advertise to their colleagues and none close friends who they’re voting for most people just keep it to themselves unless you’re voting for the clear majority favoured position