A YouGov poll found that among voters under 30, Nigel Farage’s Reform UK was more popular than the Conservative Party in this month’s general election.
The poll of 35,000 voters found that 9.5 percent voted for Reform UK, compared to 8 percent for the Tories. Reform is the third most popular party among young people after Labour and the Green Party.
“The youth thing is really interesting, something very big is happening,” Reform UK leader Nigel Farage MP said Tuesday.
The polling echoes a trend experienced by other anti-establishment and populist right-wing parties across Europe, which have also seen surges in support from younger voters.
In France, Marine Le Pen‘s National Rally (RN) was able to secure 30 percent of the youth vote in the European parliament elections this year, up 10 points from the 2019 election.
In Germany, a song about deportation became a viral sensation among young people this summer as the Alternative for Germany (AfD) became the most popular party among 14 to 29-year-olds in Germany.
Professor Klaus Hurrelmann claimed that the popularity of the AfD among young people showed a shift to anxiety over the country’s future and an increased fear of instability, both economic and geopolitical.
Mathieu Gallard, research director at Ipsos, explained that immigration was a major factor driving people toward populist parties, and that seems to be the major issue among those young voters.
In the UK, Reform UK campaigned on net zero immigration, meaning that the party promised to only allow in as many immigrants as those who left the country each year.
The Tories, meanwhile, oversaw the largest legal and illegal migration wave the UK has ever seen during their tenure in government.
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