Will Reform UK’s racism scandal cost votes?
Reform UK’s racism scandal poses an electoral test: past UKIP polling suggests reputational damage can coexist with resilient support, but clear evidence may still drive defections.
🔍 WHY THIS STORY MATTERS
Reform UK’s response will test whether voters separate candidates’ conduct from the party itself, with consequences for its credibility, organisational competence and ability to retain supporters.
KEY TAKEAWAYS...
● An ITV undercover investigation recorded Reform UK councillors and candidates making racist, Islamophobic, misogynistic, and violent remarks.
● Before the documentary aired, Reform stood at 21% in a YouGov voting-intention poll, providing a baseline against which subsequent movement can be assessed.
● UKIP’s 2014 experience showed that widespread concern about racism could coexist with substantial electoral support.
● Research on political controversies suggests clearer evidence and responsibility can matter even among voters already loyal to a party.
ITV ’s newly released documentary Undercover: A Year in Reform has raised fresh questions about Nigel Farage’s party, after covertly recorded footage showed councillors and candidates making racist, Islamophobic, misogynistic and violent remarks. The investigation also exposed the party’s vetting procedures and internal discussions about controversial candidates.
The immediate consequences have included resignations and suspensions of Reform UK councillors and candidates. But whether the documentary’s revelations will translate into lost votes is less certain.
The documentary’s significance lies partly in the questions it raises about organisational responsibility. Reform has said it has improved its vetting procedures since the 2024 general election and insists that there is “no room for racism” in its ranks. Farage, meanwhile, has argued that parties cannot vet people for everything they might say in the future.
The disciplinary position is not uniform. According to ITV’s published account of what has happened to those councillors and candidates featured in the documentary, several have since resigned from their posts or the party, while others remain in place.
Aspiring parliamentary candidate Jason Powell was suspended by Reform after recordings emerged of him advocating the building of concentration camps to house migrants who arrive on small boats. He also said that Muslims cannot be British.
The revelations raise a broader question. Do voters regard the remarks of Reform councillors and candidates as isolated acts of misconduct, or evidence of a problem with the party itself?
The gap between perceptions and votes
Polling from before the documentary’s release offers a useful starting point. In October 2025, YouGov found that 47% of Britons considered Reform UK generally racist, while 43% said the same of its voters. The same YouGov poll found that 90% of Reform voters considered the party generally not racist, 88% said the same of its policies and 87% considered Reform voters to be generally not racist.
These findings reveal a divide between Reform supporters and the wider electorate. But they don’t establish whether the party’s supporters approve of racist remarks. YouGov research found that 86% of Reform supporters considered immigration a major national issue, while 35–39% cited perceived honesty or the need for political change to be among the party’s attractions. However, polling cannot establish whether these voters would overlook racist remarks in making their voting decisions.
The latest widely reported YouGov poll on voting intention figures, conducted on October 11–12, put Reform at 21%. With the documentary initially being broadcast on October 18, the figures taken before the broadcast provide a baseline for future voting intentions. But it’s not yet clear whether the ITV documentary will now have discouraged people from voting Reform.
What happened when UKIP faced similar scrutiny?
The UK Independent Party’s (UKIP) experience in 2014-15 provides a useful, if imperfect, historical comparison, due to a similar series of controversies involving candidates’ remarks.
William Henwood, a council candidate, tweeted that comedian Lenny Henry should emigrate to “a black country”, prompting his resignation from the party. Andre Lampitt, who appeared in UKIP’s European election broadcast, was suspended after racist and islamaphobic tweets emerged.
Other candidates came under scrutiny for comments about Islam and the murder of Stephen Lawrence, while The Guardian newspaper revealed that one candidate’s Facebook page showed a “like” for a group devoted to the far-right British National Party.
On May 7 2014, Farage rejected accusations that UKIP was racist, arguing that the controversial remarks of a small number of candidates did not represent the party as a whole.
An ITV News/ComRes poll surveying 2,052 British adults the previous month reported that 32% of respondents considered UKIP to be a racist party. Yet among people who said they were likely to vote in the European elections in May, UKIP received the most support with 38% – although its share fell to 32% when a broader group of likely voters was included.
A separate YouGov poll published days later put UKIP on 29% for the European elections.
Together, these polls suggested that concerns about racism can coexist with strong electoral support, but couldn’t establish whether the controversies reduced UKIP’s support. When votes were counted on May 22, the party won 27.5% of the vote in Great Britain and 24 seats in the European parliament.
The polls differed in their timing and methods, and were unable to isolate the effect of the allegations. Nevertheless, they demonstrated that substantial reputational concerns could coexist with strong electoral support. UKIP’s opponents could persuade many people that the party attracted racist candidates – but this didn’t necessarily affect the amount of votes they received. Nor can we tell how UKIP might have performed without the controversies.
The electoral test yet to come
For Reform, any political consequences of revelations about their representatives can’t be inferred from public condemnation alone.
The crucial distinction is between disapproval and defection. Research suggests that voters’ responses to political controversies depend partly on their existing party loyalties and their tolerance of political misconduct. A 2014 study based on British survey data found that both factors shaped how people judged political controversies.
More recently, a 2026 study found that well-substantiated evidence of misconduct during the Partygate scandal was associated with less favourable evaluations of the governing Conservative Party and reduced voting intentions. Even loyal voters may punish a party when evidence of misconduct is clear.
Neither voter loyalty nor the severity of a controversy alone determine its electoral consequences. Some voters may discount allegations against a party they support, while others may reconsider when evidence is clear and responsibility is apparent. Whether voters prioritise a party’s policies over the conduct of its candidates also cannot be assumed.
Establishing the documentary’s effects on perceptions of Reform’s credibility, or their organisational competence, would require polling that directly measures public reactions as well as subsequent voting intentions. It is too early to conclude that the programme has either damaged Reform electorally, or left its support unchanged.
The central question is not simply whether voters condemn racism, but whether they regard the controversy as important enough to change their political choices. UKIP’s experience shows why that relationship cannot be assumed. For Reform, the longer-term test will be whether voters continue to see these incidents as individual failings, or increasingly associate them with the party’s organisation and leadership.
🔮 WHAT MATTERS NEXT...
🎯 WHAT TO WATCH NEXT:
● Post-documentary voting-intention polls will provide the first indication of whether Reform moves materially from its pre-broadcast 21% baseline.
● Watch whether further councillors, candidates or officials are suspended, resign or remain in place, since disciplinary decisions may shape perceptions of organisational responsibility.
● Watch whether criticism changes Reform supporters’ assessments of the party itself rather than simply reinforcing the existing divide between supporters and opponents.
● Watch whether rival parties can convert scrutiny of Reform’s candidates into voter switching rather than condemnation without electoral defection.
🎯 MOST LIKELY OUTCOME:
● Unless subsequent polling shows sustained movement away from Reform, the historical comparison suggests reputational controversy and substantial electoral support could continue to coexist.
🎯 WHAT COULD CHANGE THE PICTURE:
● Further well-substantiated revelations that voters attribute to wider organisational or leadership failures, rather than individual misconduct, could increase electoral pressure.
🎯 WHY THIS MATTERS:
● The decisive measure will be voter behaviour: whether condemnation changes party choice rather than merely perceptions of Reform and its representatives.
GOING FURTHER
Reform UK councillors and candidates filmed making racist and misogynist comments | THE GUARDIAN
Aspiring Reform MP who said ‘you cannot be Muslim and British’ suspended | THE GUARDIAN
Farage accused of ‘protecting’ Reform candidate over racist slurs against David Lammy | THE GUARDIAN
Latest polling figures | SKY NEWS
Ukip candidates add to Nigel Farage’s woes with a barrage of racism | THE GUARDIAN
Ukip member in election broadcast suspended over racist tweets | THE GUARDIAN
Nigel Farage: don’t call Ukip racist | THE GUARDIAN
Most people believe Ukip contains racists, poll finds | THE GUARDIAN
Sources:
▪ This piece was originally published in The Conversation and re-published in Europeans TODAY on 20 October 2026. | The author writes in a personal capacity.
▪ Cover: Dreamstime/KORWEN.
