The Polls

YouGov has Reform at 25%, down from their 30% autumn peak. Sir John Curtice said on 20 March that Reform is "no doubt" in decline. More in Common and Opinium track closer to 27%. The direction is the same everywhere: down.

Farage blames YouGov's methods. He claims they understate Reform by five points. That dispute matters because five points decides whether Reform is a fringe spoiler or the largest Commons bloc under first past the post.

Lowe's 13.3% Best PM rating beats Ed Davey's 8.6% in the same Find Out Now poll. Farage dominates at 26.4%. But the gap is closing in a way that helps nobody on the right. Restore polled 7% in a separate Find Out Now survey of 3,029 adults post-launch. That's high enough to split Reform's base in competitive seats.

Hope Not Hate polling shows two-thirds of Reform members view Lowe positively. The ideological overlap isn't accidental. Labour doesn't need to win back voters. They just need the right to stay fractured through May 7.

Next test is whether BPC pollsters start including Restore in standard voting intention. Find Out Now commissioned polls show Lowe registers. YouGov, Ipsos, and Savanta haven't added him to their regular tracking. Their stated threshold: 20,000 social followers or existing parliamentary representation. Restore has neither, despite Lowe's 722,000 X following predating the party launch.

May 7 locals will either validate or kill Restore's viability. Win council seats and BPC exclusion becomes indefensible. Lose and the 7% figure gets written off as commissioned noise. Reform defends over 1,000 council seats that day. Every one Restore contests splits the vote further.

Farage can't break 30% despite Labour collapsing to 17% in some surveys. A real opposition would be mid-30s by now. Instead Reform plateaus while Greens hit 19% and Conservatives cling to 17%. The split hands Starmer survival he doesn't deserve. If Reform can't crack 28% before May, the vote-splitting narrative will dominate every local count.