Farage’s £72m of crypto donations could swing the general election

If Reform is allowed to keep its new £72m war chest of new donations, how much impact will it have on how people vote? Maybe not much. But it doesn’t need to be much to alter the outcome of the next general election.

What follows are illustrations of small shifts in Reform’s support. My starting point is an MRP survey conducted shortly after Andy Burnham became prime minister. It was conducted by Convergent Opinion. Its overall voting figures are close to the current average: Labour 26%, Reform 23%, Conservative 21%, Lib Dem 11%, Green 10%.

Its seat projection also looks sensible. Labour would be the largest party, with 245 seats; it would be 81 seats short of an overall majority. Reform would come second with 174 MPs, followed by the Conservatives on 99, the Lib Dems on 67, SNP 25 and Greens 7.

To illustrate what could happen, here are two alternative scenarios. Both are deliberately modest in their variation from the current figures. First, Reform does three points better in each seat and the Tories three points worse. This would take Reform’s vote share to 26% and the Tories to 18%. Secondly, the opposite: Reform down three points to 20%, and the Tories up three to 24%.

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There are almost unlimited assumptions that can be made. But any plausible scenario would show that seat numbers are highly sensitive to small differences in vote shares. That’s because there will be an unusually large number of marginal seats when the top three parties are all in the range of 18-26%. It’s one of the quirks of first-past-the-post.

In these illustrations, a three-point rise in Reform’s national vote share would give it 78 extra seats and make it comfortably the largest party. A three-point reduction would cost it 67 seats and condemn it to third place.

The lesson is clear. If Reform outspends its rivals massively, this could change who governs Britain, even if the money moves only a small percentage of votes. Is that a democratic scandal? You may very well think so. I couldn’t possibly comment.