King's College London

Reform UK supporters are imagined to be more hostile to rejoining the EU and keener on low taxes for the wealthy than they really are – while also viewed as the group of voters most driven by dislike of others and the party people most want to block from power, according to a new study.

Carried out by the Policy Institute at King’s College London and UK in a Changing Europe ahead of the Reform party conference in Birmingham, the research reveals how well the party’s supporters, their opponents and the public as a whole understand each other and how they feel about each other.

It finds a quarter of Reform supporters say they want Britain to rejoin the EU, but the public guess only around one in 10 do.

And the public overestimate the share of Reform supporters who want low taxes on the wealthy by 13 points.

But on a range of other issues, public perceptions are far closer to reality – for example, people have an accurate view of the proportions of Reform supporters who think all immigration to Britain should be stopped and who want to scrap the government’s net zero target.

The study finds Reform is the party people would most like to prevent from winning in their constituency, and the only party whose voters are seen to be driven more by dislike of others than by concern for people like themselves.

And it is Greens who feel most negatively towards Reform supporters, giving them a rating of just 9 on a 0–100 scale measuring warmth of feeling, while Reform supporters give them a more positive rating of 20 in return.

The study is based on a survey of 3,750 UK adults, carried out with Opinium between 7 and 13 August 2026.

Misunderstandings of – and by – Reform UK supporters

Where Reform UK supporters are misunderstood

• A quarter (25%) of Reform supporters want to rejoin the EU, with a further 14% undecided. But no party's supporters come close to guessing this: the public imagine just one in 11 (9%) back rejoining, while Labour supporters have the closest guess, at 14%. Even Reform supporters themselves guess only 11% of their own side would back a return.
• 23% of Reform supporters are in favour of low taxes on the wealthy – but the public guess 36%, with Lib Dems (45%) and Greens (43%) most overestimating Reform support for this.

Where perceptions of Reform supporters are accurate

• On issues Reform supporters feel most strongly about, the public reads them accurately: people guess 80% back stopping all immigration outright, close to the 76% reality, and 63% want to scrap the 2050 net zero target, against a true figure of 60%.
• Perceptions are similarly close on Reform support for Britain spending more on defence, even if it means less money for other public services (57% guessed vs 58% reality) and expanding private provision in the NHS (52% guessed vs 51% reality).

Where Reform supporters misunderstand others

• Reform supporters significantly overestimate the proportion of other parties' supporters who want to increase immigration – for example, guessing 51% of Greens want it to rise, compared with the reality of 23%.
• They make the same error on imprisonment, imagining around twice as many Labour (37% vs 20%), Green (45% vs 26%) and Conservative (23% vs 10%) supporters want to send far fewer people to prison as really do.
• Reform supporters also overestimate others’ support for keeping taxes on the wealthy low, just as others overestimate theirs – guessing 48% of Conservative supporters back the idea against a reality of 21%, and 27% of Lib Dems against 11%.
• Three in four (76%) Reform supporters want to stop all immigration outright – the highest of any party, well ahead of the Conservatives (51%).

What Reform supporters really want

• Three in five (60%) want to scrap the 2050 net zero target, similar to the Conservatives (54%).
• Despite being the most sympathetic of any party's supporters to the idea, Reform supporters still reject low taxes on the wealthy by two to one (50% vs 23%) – much like the Conservatives (45% vs 21%).
• They're the firmest opponents of sending fewer people to prison (72% against) and the keenest of any party on expanding private provision in the NHS (51% in favour), although supporters of all other parties, except the Greens, are more likely to support rather than oppose this expansion.
• No party's supporters are warmly regarded by the public in general – every party sits in the 30s or 40s on a 0–100 favourability scale, with Reform supporters faring worst, with an average rating of 36 – just behind the Greens, on 38.
• Conservatives feel warmest towards Reform supporters, giving them a mean rating of 37 out of 100, while Labour (17) and Lib Dem (16) supporters score them far lower, and Greens lowest of all (9).
• Reform supporters read the other parties’ view of them fairly accurately, if a little optimistically – overestimating the warmth felt towards them by Conservative, Labour and Lib Dem supporters by 4 to 8 points, and by Greens by 10 points (9 vs 19).
• The coldness is mutual: Reform supporters rate their feelings towards Labour, Lib Dem and Green voters at 19, 25 and 20 out of 100 respectively – far below the public overall's ratings (41, 42 and 38).

How the public and other parties feel about Reform UK supporters

Few think the other side's voters or leaders care about people like them

• Majorities (63-76%) of Green, Lib Dem and Labour supporters feel Reform voters and the party's leaders don't really care about people like them.
• Conservatives are slightly more likely to agree (34%) than disagree (31%) that the leaders of Reform don’t really care about people like them.
• A majority of Reform supporters say the voters and leaders of Labour, the Greens and Lib Dems don't care about people like them, with the feeling strongest towards Labour's leaders, where nearly four in five (77%) feel this way.
• One in eight (12%) Reform supporters also say their own party’s leadership does not care about people like them.

Voters’ motivations: driven by dislike or concern and care?

• Supporters of every party are more likely to say their own vote is driven by concern for people like themselves rather than dislike of others – including a majority (55%) of Reform supporters.
• But Reform are the only party whose voters are seen by the public to be driven more by dislike of others (39%) than by concern for people like themselves (26%).
• Supporters of every other party think Reform voters are driven more by dislike of people unlike themselves than by concern for their own, with Greens most likely to say so, by 62% to 23%.
• Reform supporters feel the same way about other parties, albeit to a lesser extent, saying Green voters are driven by dislike of people who are different to themselves rather than concern for their own by 41% to 27%, and Labour voters by 36% to 30%.

Tactical voting: Reform’s allies and opponents at the polls

Reform are the party voters most want to block

• Reform are the party people most want to prevent from winning in their constituency, named by two in five (41%) of the public, rising to a majority of Labour (63%), Green (77%) and Lib Dem (71%) supporters. Labour is the next most cited party, driven by half of Reform (52%) and Conservative (49%) supporters saying they'd vote tactically to keep them out.
• Almost a third (29%) of the public say they would consider voting Conservative to block Reform in a close contest between the two parties – three times higher than the share who say they'd do the reverse (9%). But Labour and Green supporters would still be more likely to vote for their own party regardless.
• Around half of Green (54%) and Lib Dem (46%) supporters say they would consider voting Labour to stop Reform – but Conservatives are more than twice as likely to say they'd choose Reform (33%) over Labour (14%), and likelier still to vote Conservative anyway (45%).

The Conservatives are Reform supporters' only real choice in a tactical vote

• One in three (33%) Reform supporters say they’d consider voting Conservative – far ahead of all other parties, with Labour (7%) and Green (7%) the next most selected options.
• Conservative supporters are the only group with a notable share willing to vote tactically for Reform (30%), against 8% of Labour, 5% of Green and 4% of Lib Dem supporters.

Professor Bobby Duffy, Director of the Policy Institute at King's College London, said:

“People are often very wrong about what supporters of other parties think – but that’s not the case for Reform UK supporters, where the public are incredibly accurate in their view that a large majority want to stop all immigration, and are just about spot-on in their guesses that majorities also want to scrap net zero, spend more on defence and want the private sector to play a greater role in the NHS. The biggest surprise for the public is that a quarter of Reform supporters say that the UK should rejoin the EU, which they guessed would be much lower.

“There are bigger gaps the other way round – in particular, Reform voters think supporters of other parties are much further from their views on immigration than they really are. For example, they think half of Green supporters and a third of Labour supporters would like to see immigration increased, when only 23% and 15% actually would.

“The real issue for Reform is not misperceptions of their supporters or their views, but rather a striking commitment to keeping them out of power, with large majorities of Labour, Lib Dem and Green supporters each saying they particularly want to stop Reform winning in their constituency, much more so than the Conservatives.”

Professor Anand Menon, Director of UK in a Changing Europe, said:

“The research underlines a fundamental problem for Reform that recent by-elections have hinted at. Many non-Reform supporters are willing to do what it takes to prevent Reform from winning, which might make their electoral position significantly more vulnerable than the polling might, at first glance, suggest.”

Study details
Fieldwork was carried out by Opinium across 7-13 August 2026, consisting of a nationally representative sample of 3,750 UK adults aged 18+ weighted by age, gender, education, region, ethnicity, working status, political attention, 2024 GE vote, 2016 EU vote in order to reflect the profile of the UK population.

Reform UK party conference event
The findings of this study will be discussed at an event at Reform UK party conference, titled What do Reform voters really want?, from 12:45 to 14:00 in the Endeavour Theatre, NEC.

Panellists will include the Rt Hon Nadhim Zahawi, Reform UK member and former Chancellor of the Exchequer; Laila Cunningham, Reform UK London Mayoral Candidate; and Gawain Towler, Reform UK Governing Board Member.