Nigel Farage is on course to win the Clacton seat with the biggest swing in modern electoral history, a new poll has suggested.
The survey, commissioned by Arron Banks, a former Ukip donor, suggests that Farage will win 42 per cent of the vote in Clacton in Essex. The Tories are forecast to win 27 per cent and Labour 24 per cent.
Survation, the company that carried out the survey, said the scale of the projected swing from the Tories to Reform would be “extremely rare” and “unprecedented in modern electoral history”.
The seat has been held by Giles Watling, a Conservative, since 2017. In 2019, when Boris Johnson put Brexit at the heart of his campaign, Watling secured a 24,702 majority with 72 per cent of the vote share.
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The seat was previously held by Douglas Carswell, who defected from the Tories to Ukip in 2014 under Farage’s leadership. He was re-elected in a by-election in October of that year before retaining the seat in the 2015 general election. He resigned from Ukip two years later and announced he would not contest the seat in the 2017 election and it returned to the Conservatives.
The poll mirrors a similar survey by the polling company Ipsos, which suggested that the Conservatives could be pushed into third place behind Labour. It found that Reform could win 53 per cent of the vote in Clacton, with Labour on 24 per cent and the Tories on 17 per cent.
Farage has stood to be an MP seven times, in five general elections and two by-elections but he has lost each time — coming closest in 2015 when he was defeated in South Thanet by 2,800 votes.
Survation polled 506 adults between June 11-13 after Farage’s announcement that he was standing.
Damian Lyons Lowe, the founder and chief executive of Survation, said: “In examining the history of UK elections, we find that swings as large as the one currently projected in Clacton are extremely rare. The projected swing in Clacton from the Conservative Party to the Reform UK party is 43.5 per cent. This is considerably larger than many significant historical swings.
“The swing currently projected in Clacton, from a 72 per cent Conservative vote share in 2019 to a 42 per cent vote share for Nigel Farage’s Reform UK in 2024, would indeed be unprecedented in modern UK electoral history. This kind of dramatic shift highlights a significant realignment of voter preferences and could signal broader changes in the political landscape.”
Farage said: “This poll shows Reform will win seats at the election. I think many people are going to be surprised on July 4. If you vote Reform, you get Reform.”
Banks is a close ally of Farage. He commissioned another Survation poll in January which suggested that Farage would win 37 per cent of the vote if he decided to stand.
