Are the Greens eating into the Reform vote? New poll puts the far-right party just 4 points ahead

Party leader Zack Polanski has posted to social media that it’s “now clear” his Greens are “directly challenging” Reform. With multiple pollsters showing a narrowing lead between the two front-running parties, the seemingly bizarre prospect of voters crossing from the far right to the left has become a hot topic.

Polanski’s comments were prompted by an article published by the i on 23 April. It speculated on the slow decline of Reform’s popularity to its current 4-point-lead over the Greens. The i ran with the headline:

Has Reform peaked? Trump and Greens halt Farage’s march

At this point, we at the Canary would just like to say… good God we hope so.

‘Reform plateau?’

Just last week, a More in Common poll predicted a vote share of 25%. Though this later rose to 27%, the damage was already done. The 25% represented the far-right party’s lowest poll rating of the year, and More in Common asked if we had seen a “Reform plateau?”:

Reform UK are projected to win 324 seats, 57 fewer than in More in Common’s January model – and one MP short of a majority in the House of Commons, after a plateau in the polls.

Similarly, a 23 April poll from Find Out Now put Reform at 25%. This was just 4 points ahead of the Greens in second place. Interestingly, the numbers represented a 1-point loss for Farage’s coterie of racist gobshites, and a 1-point gain for Polanski’s party.

On the same day, Politico also pegged Reform at a 24% average, according to its “poll of polls”. This was the far-right party’s lowest predicted result since April 2025, and a long way from its 31% high last autumn.

Farage’s Trump problem

The i also highlighted that the popularity of Farage himself had also followed a similar downturn. YouGov, for instance, recently gave the wannabe-authoritarian leader a popularity rating of -38. Again, this represented his lowest score of the year.

For comparison, Polanski is currently the second most popular leader of any of the ‘Big 5′ parties, at -9. Meanwhile, Starmer comes dead last at -45, and the Lib Dems’ Ed Davey is out in front at -3. We guess being terminally inoffensive has its advantages after all.

More in Common senior executive Louis O’Geran speculated on the sudden downturn for both Reform and Farage:

The top reason people give for not voting for Reform is Nigel Farage’s connection to Trump. It’s just become more and more toxic.

Skawkbox also gave a similar analysis of a YouGov poll back on 10 March, writing:

interestingly, even among Reform’s voters, Reform’s closeness to Trump is hurting the limited-company-as-party.

While ‘pro-Trump’ is the largest self-identification among Reform supporters, it’s not an outright majority. Almost a quarter of them consider themselves to be ‘anti-Trump’ as well.

Farage has long maintained a close relationship with his fascist counterpart in the US. However, following Trump’s illegal war on Iran and the ensuing spike in the cost of living for the UK, that association has taken on a distinctly damaging air.

Pity that any of Trump’s other atrocities didn’t do the same, but what the hey.

Greens are directly challenging Reform

However, the i also mused that Trump wasn’t the only reason for Reform’s poor performance of late:

The Green Party of England and Wales may itself be partly responsible for Reform’s downturn. Zack Polanski’s party has risen inversely to Reform’s decline. In August 2025 – at Reform’s peak – the Greens were polling 9 per cent. Today they are on 16 per cent and contending with the Tories and Labour for second place.

Party leader Zack Polanski actually retweeted the above tidbit, along with a remark that:

It is now clear the Greens are directly challenging Reform.

People are fed up with the status quo and want change but Farage is offering them old Tory solutions and scapegoats the vulnerable.

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The Greens have a real plan to lower bills, protect the NHS & cap extortionate rents.

The article went on to speculate that whilst the Greens and Reform are ideologically opposed, many voters tend towards being non-ideological. Along these lines, political research director Chris Hopkins mused on the potential Reform-Green bleed:

Both parties represent an ‘anti-Establishment, none of the above’ vote, right? They are two sides of the ‘not the Labour and the Tories’ coin. Neither Zack Polanski nor Nigel Farage would probably agree with this, but they represent the same thing on a really macro level, which is ‘the current system isn’t working – we have the alternative’.

So at that point for a voter, it’s just like, what flavour do you want your alternative to be? Voters are not as left or right driven as we think they are.

As always, any political analysis needs to be taken with a large pinch of salt — but this certainly chimes with a lot of what we’ve seen of late. People crave an alternative to the current system, and Farage — in spite of all evidence to the contrary — has styled himself as the anti-establishment choice.

However, the reverse can also be true — if Polanski can continue to show that he has viable answers and actual convictions, who knows how far he might go?

Featured image via the Canary

By Alex/Rose Cocker

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