July 2026 Polling Averages: Burnham Bouncing Back to March 2025

The Electoral Reform Society's Ian Simpson looks at the polls from July 2026

July saw the transition from one UK Prime Minister to another for the fifth time since 2019. Andy Burnham stepped through the threshold of Number 10, followed by a flurry of announcements on various issues - from the cost of living, to social care reform, to devolution.

Seven of this month’s polls were conducted since Andy Burnham was elected leader of the Labour party, becoming Prime Minister shortly after. All of July’s ten polls took place after Keir Starmer announced that he would resign and it quickly became clear that Burnham was highly likely to take over.

So what impact, if any, has this massive change at the top of UK politics had on public opinion? Well, in polling terms, we are back in March 2025. This was before Reform UK’s big electoral breakthrough at the English local elections of May 2025, after which they received a polling boost of around six percentage points.

In our March 2025 polling averages, the vote shares of the three largest parties were as follows: Labour: 24.9%; Reform UK: 24.0%; Conservatives: 23.3%.

As we can see below, these are very similar to the figures for July 2026, which look quite different to the polling we witnessed in the intervening 14 months. See below for more details.

July 2026 UK General Election Polling Averages

The average (mean) vote shares from the most recent July poll by each of the ten polling companies who published a UK general election poll conducted during July, is as follows:

Labour: 24.9% (+3.9*)
Reform UK: 24.3% (-2.1)
Conservatives: 19.8% (+0.7)
Greens: 11.3% (-1.0) resign,
Liberal Democrats: 11.0% (-1.0)
Others: 8.7% (-0.4)

* Compared with June’s average - Each month a different combination of pollsters will publish polls, so this change is not strictly comparing like with like, but gives a general sense of change.

July’s polling average was compiled using data from the following pollsters – BMG; Deltapoll; Find Out Now; Freshwater Strategy; Ipsos (fieldwork: 25-30 June but included with July data as was published too late to be included in June data); More In Common; Opinium; Survation; Trajectory Partnership; YouGov.

What do these results mean?

• The party with the highest vote share, Labour, has the support of fewer than a quarter of voters. At 24.9%, this is the joint lowest we have seen for the top party since we started collating monthly polling averages in February 2025.

• This is the first time that a party other than Reform UK has topped our monthly polling average since March 2025, which is also when Labour last topped the poll, with 24.9%, the same vote share as they have achieved this month.

• There is only a 13.9-point gap between the 1st and 5th placed parties, the smallest we have seen since we started collecting this data.

• Reform UK’s vote share (24.3%) represents its lowest monthly average vote share since March 2025, when they recorded 24.0%. Reform are down 7.5 points from their monthly average vote share peak, which was 31.8% in September 2025.

• The Conservative’s vote share (19.8%) is their highest since April 2025, when they recorded 21.7%.

• The Liberal Democrats’ vote share (11.0%) is the lowest since we started collating polling averages in February 2025.

It is obviously early days in Andy Burnham’s premiership, but so far we have seen a fairly significant shift, with Labour knocking Reform UK off top spot for the first time in over a year.

There has also been evidence of changes in real votes in ballot boxes too. Labour achieved a comfortable victory in the Greater Manchester mayoral election, held on 30 July 2026. The first preference vote shares for each party represented a big swing towards Labour compared with the results across Greater Manchester at the May 2026 local elections (see below). It should be noted, though, that around 300,000 fewer people voted in the mayoral election compared to the local elections.

Greater Manchester Mayor first preference vote shares

(and changes compared to vote shares across Greater Manchester at May 2026 local elections)

Labour: 47.1% (+23.4)
Reform UK: 21.0% (-9.7)
Greens: 12.2% (-6.8)
Restore Britain: 8.7% (+8.7)
Conservatives: 7.7% (-2.5)
Liberal Democrats: 2.8% (-6.6)

It is also worth noting that this was the first mayoral election held since the welcome return to the Supplementary Vote electoral system. This meant the counting of second preferences of those who voted for eliminated candidates, with 58,076 votes transferred to Labour’s Bev Craig and 45,250 votes transferred to Reform UK’s Sian Astley. After the transfer of second preferences, Craig had the support of 58% of people who had cast a valid first preference vote.

Turning back to the national opinion polls, while there has been a bump in the combined Labour + Conservative vote share, to 44.7%, the highest since April 2025 (46.0%), we are still very much in a multi-party world, with five parties remaining in double digits, an unprecedented situation prior to the last few months.

Let’s see how things develop from here…