The farm vote has stopped being Reform’s by default. Eight months after Reform took a clear majority of The Farming Forum’s election poll, a repeat run has the Conservatives back in front, Restore taking a sixth of the ballot from a standing start, and one voter in ten refusing to pick any party at all.
The Farming Forum has run its election poll twice. The first, started on 4 January 2026 in the Agricultural Matters section, drew 403 contributions from 91 members and 860 reactions, an average of 2.13 reactions per contribution, and closed at 751 votes. The second opened on 3 September 2026 and had taken 117 contributions from 48 members, 282 reactions and 373 votes when counted on 7 September. Twenty-six of the 48 September contributors also posted in January, so this is broadly the same room answering the same question eight months apart.
What has changed between the two is most of British politics. Sir Keir Starmer has gone, Andy Burnham has been Prime Minister since July, the agricultural and business property relief changes have been live since April, and Restore Britain has gone from a pressure group to a registered party with an MP. The September ballot reflects that: nine options rather than five, with Restore, a none of the above option, the SNP and Plaid Cymru all added.
Reform has lost its majority
In January, Reform took 446 of 751 votes, 59.4%, more than every other party on the ballot combined. In September it sits second on 111 votes, eight behind the Conservatives.
Because the two ballots are not the same shape, the honest comparison rebases September onto the five parties that appeared both times. On that basis Reform is on 41.7%, down 17.7 points, and it is the largest single movement in the poll bar one.
Some of that has gone to Restore rather than away from the wider anti-establishment right. Put the two together and they hold 170 of 373 votes, 45.6%, still well short of what Reform managed alone in January. One bloc has become two, and on a first-past-the-post map that arithmetic matters more than the combined total. One contributor did the sum himself on 4 September, when the poll stood at 230 votes: “Put Reform & Restore voters together & you’ve got a party with 44% & well ahead even with so many misguided farmers thinking the Tories couldn’t possibly be as bad as the last time”.
Scepticism about Reform’s staying power runs through the September thread in a way it did not in January. One member argued Reform “were just a protest vote in 2024” and predicted the party would “die on the vine”. Another, no supporter of Nigel Farage, made the opposite case: “there will be no way that the civil service and the left leaning media will ever let reform/farage become pm, they will do everything in their power to stop it”.
Restore arrives and takes a sixth of the ballot
Restore Britain registered with the Electoral Commission in February 2026, so this is the first time forum members have had the option. It took 59 votes, 15.8%, more than the Lib Dems, Labour, the Greens, the SNP and Plaid Cymru combined.
The party is discussed in 11.1% of September contributions, against 0.5% in January. The tone is respectful about Rupert Lowe personally and doubtful about the machine around him. One member who has met him wrote: “I have a huge amount of respect for Rupert Lowe. He is one of the most sincere men I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting and I wish him all the best, however I think the current political system will not allow him to do what he wishes to do.”
That is the pattern across the thread. Support for the newer parties is rarely expressed as confidence that they will govern. It is expressed as a refusal to reward the two that have.
The Conservative recovery nobody in the thread can explain
The biggest single move is the Conservatives, from 26.2% in January to 44.7% on the like-for-like basis, up 18.5 points, and to 119 votes and first place on the full ballot. Mentions of the party in the thread have more than doubled, from 8.5% of January contributions to 19.7% in September.
Members spotted it before any analysis did. “I don’t remember the Conservatives having anywhere close to a third of the votes last time,” one wrote on 6 September. Others cannot reconcile it with recent farm policy history: “I can understand the Reform and Restore vote but cannot understand the Conservative popularity? They are responsible for the implementation of SFI and ELMS, removal of BPS/SPS?”
No single explanation emerges from the thread. The most common framing is defensive rather than enthusiastic, summed up by one contributor as “the incompetent devil’s we know were chosen over the incompetent devils we don’t know”.
One in ten will not choose at all
The none of the above option, added after members complained about the January ballot, took 38 votes, 10.2%. Where members explain that choice, they name policy rather than personality, and they name the same two things: the property relief changes and the post-Brexit schemes.
“Had to vote none of them, right now,” one wrote on the first day. “I cannot really vote for the party that was responsible for creating ELMS and SFI ever again. Cannot vote for the party that changed APR/BPR and fundimentally dislikes farming.” Another put it more plainly: “In reality if there were a general election then I would probably vote for one but I no idea which right now.”
Labour, meanwhile, has moved from 14 votes to 11. A change of Prime Minister and an autumn Budget widely trailed as the moment for an inheritance tax rethink has not yet registered here, though at least one member said a Burnham reversal would change his vote: “If Labour stopped spending and Burnham does what he says then I would probably vote Labour.”
The argument itself has moved
Comparing what the two threads talk about is as revealing as the vote. Brexit and the EU appeared in 15.9% of January contributions and 6.8% of September’s. Immigration and demographics went the other way, from 1.5% to 11.1%, and now sit level with Restore as a subject. Subsidy policy, the thing that supposedly drives the farm vote, is mentioned in under 2% of September contributions.
The forum is under no illusions about what its own poll is. “the entire idea is to poll the farming vote …….. which obviously will never reflect the national vote,” wrote the member who started the January thread. Another was blunter: “I don’t think you can draw any sensible analysis from a total of 230 votes on an internet forum, whose contributors could be anyone.” A third: “Shows more the demographic that uses TFF!??!!” Those are fair cautions. This is a self-selecting sample of forum members who chose to vote, not a weighted survey of UK farm businesses, and the September poll was four days old when these figures were taken. The national poll of polls this week had Labour on 25.6%, Reform 23.6% and the Conservatives 20.1%, which looks nothing like either TFF reading.
The question the trade is left with
For anyone selling into rural constituencies, lobbying in them or counting seats in them, January was a simple picture: one insurgent party holding a clear majority of a farming audience. September is not. The right is split three ways, the party that governed through the BPS transition is somehow back in front, and a tenth of the room has withdrawn from the choice altogether. Whether the autumn Budget moves any of it is the next thing worth watching, and the forum will be asked again in six months.
Read the source conversation and analysis
Download the full analysis deck (12 slides, PDF): The Rural Vote: Eight Months On
September 2026 poll: TFF Election poll – September 26
January 2026 poll: TFF Election poll
Poll figures read on 7 September 2026, when the September poll stood at 373 votes and remained open. Contribution, contributor and reaction counts are taken from a Farm IQ export of both threads covering 4 January to 6 September 2026. Quotations are reproduced verbatim, including original spelling.