Nigel Farage’s Reform UK is poised for a major electoral breakthrough, with exit polls forecasting the party will return more than a dozen MPs.
That result would make Reform the most significant new political party in recent times and threatens to tear apart the Conservative party in opposition.
Reform has placed second in the seats of Blyth & Ashington and Sunderland South in northern England.
Farage says the two results show his party is going to win “many, many seats”.
In a video posted on social media, he claims his party has received a higher share of the vote in those seats “than any possible prediction or projection – it’s almost unbelievable”.
Farage himself is on course to become an MP for the first time at the eighth attempt, with exit polls indicating he will win in Clacton-on-Sea.
The first-past-the-post system often works against smaller parties, with share of the vote rarely reflected in final seats won. Reform is expected to double the vote share but win far fewer seats than the Liberal Democrats for instance, which are predicted to win around 60.
The projected result suggests Farage has been successful in poaching many voters who backed the Tories last time under Boris Johnson.
However, British pollster Sir John Curtice offered a “health warning” to the exit poll that shows a significant gain of seats for Reform.
“Basically what we have got in the exit poll is a lot of places where there is a small chance that Reform will win the seat, where we’re talking about 20-30 per cent chance and we add up these probabilities and that’s how we get to the figure 13,” he told the BBC.
“But to be honest the figure could end up being quite a lot less than that, or indeed, rather more, depending on how the cookie crumbles.”
