Sunday polling update – Labour lead and the fight for second place.

Labour leads every poll published this week, but the size of that lead ranges from one point to eight, and the real story is a two-way fight for second place.

Four national voting intention polls landed this week. Taken together, they put Labour on 27%, Reform UK and the Conservatives level on 22%, the Liberal Democrats on 10.5% and the Greens just under 10%.

The headline lead is five points. The spread behind it is wide. Trajectory Partnership (5 to 14 October) has Labour on 30 and eight points clear. Freshwater Strategy (9 to 11 October) has Labour on 29, six ahead of Reform. Find Out Now (14 October) has a three-point gap. YouGov (11 to 12 October) has it at a single point: Labour 24, Conservatives 23.

That divergence matters. A one-point lead and an eight-point lead describe very different political situations, and anyone reading a single poll this week would come away with a skewed picture. The average is the safer guide.

The movement is with the Conservatives. Kemi Badenoch’s party is up three with YouGov and two with Find Out Now on their previous polls, and is now neck and neck with Reform in the average. YouGov has Labour down three over the same period. Trajectory, by contrast, shows Labour flat at 30. Freshwater has Labour up 5.6, though its last poll was in August, so that comparison covers a much longer window than the others.

On the right, Restore Britain is worth keeping an eye on. Trajectory has it on 6%, up three. YouGov has it on 2%. Find Out Now and Freshwater don’t report it separately. If Restore’s support is real, it comes largely out of Reform’s pool, and that changes the arithmetic for second place.

A few caveats for careful readers. This is a simple unweighted average of four polls, not a modelled poll of polls: no adjustment for pollster house effects, sample size or recency. Plaid Cymru is averaged across the three polls that report it. Restore Britain is broken out by only two pollsters and so isn’t included in the average graphic. YouGov’s published figures sum to 98%. Changes quoted are each pollster’s own change on its previous poll, and those previous polls fall on different dates. We haven’t included a seat projection this week.

Labour is ahead. How far ahead, and who is really in second, is still open.

Sources

• Trajectory Partnership, GB/UK voting intention, fieldwork 5 to 14 October 2026, n=1,473, MoE ±2.6%. Change vs Trajectory poll of 16 September 2026.
• Find Out Now, voting intention, fieldwork 14 October 2026, n=2,482, MoE ±2.0%. Change vs Find Out Now poll of 7 October 2026.
• YouGov, voting intention, fieldwork 11 to 12 October 2026, n=2,393, MoE ±2.0%. Change vs YouGov poll of 5 October 2026.
• Freshwater Strategy, voting intention, fieldwork 9 to 11 October 2026, n=1,235, MoE ±2.8%. Change vs Freshwater poll of 10 August 2026.
• Figures as published by Poliwave UK (x.com/PoliwaveWebsite; poliwave.com), accessed 18 October 2026.
• Methodology: Lowick Hedry’s own simple unweighted mean of the four polls above. Parties are averaged only across the polls that report them separately.