Nigel Farage has celebrated the exit poll’s findings, declaring Reform UK will “win many, many seats”.
The exit poll projects Reform UK will win 13 MPs, including Farage in the Essex seat of Clacton.
In a video posed to X/Twitter, Farage said: “It’s midnight, there are two results in from the north-east of England that put Reform on 30% of the vote, that is way more than any possible prediction or projection. It is almost unbelievable”.
The former UKIP leader went on to criticise the media coverage of the election, labelling it “almost comical”.
“There’s not a single representative on there from Reform UK, mainstream media are in denial just as much as our political parties”, he said.
He added: “This is going to 6 million votes plus. This folks is huge”.
Ben Habib, Reform’s deputy leader, was the first of the party’s senior figures to seize on the BBC/ITV/Sky survey projection.
He posted on X/Twitter: “This is a huge bridgehead. This is politically seismic. This is the beginning of the fightback for the nation state of the United Kingdom.”
Early declarations on Friday morning suggest that Reform is set to make strides this election. Blyth and Ashington, a new seat in the north-east of England, was won by Labour’s Ian Lavery with 50 per cent of the vote.
Reform finished second with 27 per cent, as its candidate, Mark Peart, polled 10,857 votes. That was more than 4,700 ahead of the Conservatives, who came third.
Reform also polled 10,779 in Sunderland Central – 6,073 votes behind the newly elected Labour MP Lewis Atkinson – again relegating the Conservatives to third place with almost twice as many votes as them.
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