Whether Reform is first or third depends on sampling fluctuations. What's important is that it has now cleared the first hurdle in a marathon race to win the next election. It is now a major party in the eyes of the voters rather than an also-ran third party. However, in a marathon the winner is not the runner ahead at the first lap but the one who is first at the finish line. Reform has lots more hurdles to clear before the finish line is reached in 2029.
The next hurdle is Reform's need to show it can win seats as well as votes in the first-past-the-post electoral system. At last July's general election it took 14.5 percent of the vote but less than one percent of MPs. Under-representation in the House of Commons has been the penalty Reform pays for having its support spread relatively evenly nationwide.
Local elections in England and Wales in May offer the chance for Reform to win hundreds of the thousands of council seats up for grabs. The policy of successive Conservative and Labour governments to starve local authorities of cash while they simultaneously face rising costs gives Reform, a protest party unsullied by responsibility for local services, a great target.
Since a big majority of council seats that Reform wins will come from the Conservatives, this will spread demoralization among grass-roots Tories. Some will start arguing for Kemi Badenoch to do a deal with Reform in order to defeat an unpopular Labour government. Given a refusal, disaffected Conservatives can take matters into their own hands by switching to a party that is gaining ground rather than remaining with a Conservative Party going nowhere.
At some point in the not too distant future a by-election will occur. Since Labour has more than three times the Conservative number of MPs, the statistical likelihood is that it will occur in a Labour-held seat. This would test Reform's pincer strategy of seeking protest votes from Labour voters dissatisfied with the Labour government's failure to improve social services and from Tories giving Reform support to oust a Labour MP.
Elections for devolved parliaments in Wales and Scotland in May will offer Reform two more hurdles. In Wales the party's self-proclaimed challenge is to come first in the five-party competition for the Senedd's 60 seats. In Scotland current polls indicate it will win enough seats to deprive the Scottish Nationalists and Labour the chance of forming a stable government. Negotiations to form coalition or minority governments in Edinburgh and Cardiff could be a harbinger for Westminster in 2029, since current calculations show an 83 percent likelihood that no party will win a majority in the House of Commons.
Before the Westminster Parliament reaches the halfway mark competition for votes may turn into a relay race. If Kemi Badenoch fails to profit from Labour's decline and gain a clear lead over Reform in the polls, the party could elect a new leader. Sir Keir Starmer's risk is that a fresh runner can enter from the left, formed by backbench Labour MPs demoralized by cuts to public services and by the prospect of being one of the 140 MPs facing likely defeat at the next general election. While the breakaway group would be a new party, its leader could be a familiar face in a photograph of Starmer's current Cabinet.
Prof Richard Rose, director of the Centre for the Study of Public Policy, is Britain's senior psephologist.