Nigel Farage hails ‘progress’ as pollsters buckle under Reform pressure
EXCLUSIVE: The Reform UK leader yesterday threatened to have a fight with polling companies just as he did with NatWest.
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Nigel Farage has welcomed a move by the British Polling Council, which has issued a new demand of its members after the Reform UK leader accused certain leading pollsters of deliberately “suppressing” his party’s poll performance.
Mr Farage wrote to the British Polling Council on Sunday afternoon after launching a bruising assault on Savanta and Opinium, among others, who he said refuse to prompt for Reform when asking Britons how they will vote.
Instead, they list the other main parties such as the Tories, Labour and Liberal Democrats, but voters must choose ‘other’ before getting the opportunity to voice support for Reform UK.
Mr Farage accused these pollsters of wanting to “suppress” his increasingly popular party, demanding: “It must stop."
Just 24 hours after issuing his blunt demand to the British Polling Council that they write to all their members to “ensure greater transparency on this matter”, the surveyors’ governing body has done just that.
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In an email to Mr Farage late last night, the council’s president, Professor Jane Green, confirmed that they have “written to all our members reminding them of the importance of making their question wording, prompt and sequence clear”.
They note that their rules 2.2 and 2.3 make it clear that pollsters must do this.
Responding to the swift development, Mr Farage told the Express: “We are now making progress towards honest polling."
He warned: “The public must not be deceived during a general election.”
At yesterday’s Reform UK press conference, Mr Farage said some pollsters are giving a “very misleading” picture to the public regarding the true level of support for Reform UK.
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He said that while polls can of course be wrong - as they were over Brexit - “there has to be some consistence in methodology”.
“What happens is if you don’t prompt for Reform, you will come out at 12 percent; one of the other practices they also do is to re-weight the undecided voters back to the 2019 general election in which this party didn’t stand.
“But if you do prompt, and you put Reform on an equal footing you’re consistently at 16-17 percent.”
Confirming his letter to the British Polling Council, revealed by the Express on Sunday, he voiced hope that the polling industry will “become honest”.
However he ominously warned the polling establishment that if they failed to do so, “I will have a fight with them.
“Like I had a fight with the banks last year - I can’t wait, it’s up to them it really is.”
Numerous polls over the past week have recorded Reform UK’s support now just two points behind the Conservatives’ with Mr Farage predicting that a “tipping point” will soon happen where Reform overtakes the Tories.
