Nigel Farage has said Reform UK’s “dominance” on social media has won it a “rapidly growing” following among the under-18s who could boost the party’s chances at the 2029 election.
The Reform leader said his party’s surge in popularity with young people — Gen Z — had yet to convert into votes as many were too young to go to cast ballots on Thursday. However, with Reform now in parliament with five MPs, Farage said the trend showed “what this party is going to be capable of doing over the next six months, over the next five years”.
He argues this election was the first of two steps to replacing the Tories as the party of opposition, with Reform viewing 2029 as the moment when the crossover takes place.
Over the course of the campaign, as schools held mock elections, several reports emerged of Reform victories. At Emily Howes’s 14-year-old son Kit’s school in Walthamstow, east London, Reform — in Kit’s words — “absolutely barbecued the other candidates”.
“He’d been telling me for quite a while that Reform are what the kids like at school,” says Howes. “I’d assumed he’d got the wrong end of the stick. But he said ‘Just you wait, because when the kids can vote they are all going to vote for Reform. It’s going to be a wipeout’.”
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Farage’s party won four million votes on Thursday, taking several seats with huge Tory majorities and finishing second place in 98. This far surpasses what Farage achieved with Ukip at the height of its popularity in 2015, when it won 3.8 million votes but only one seat, although Reform finished second in fewer constituencies.
One of the notable trends during the campaign has been Reform’s use of social media, with Farage’s video content being viewed almost 40 billion times on Twitter/X. Tweets from Reform’s account were also the highest for party engagement, at 9.3 million interactions.
Speaking at a press conference on Friday afternoon, Farage said: “We completely and utterly dominated social media, whether it was X, whether it was Facebook, whether it was Instagram, whether it was TikTok. We completely dominated that landscape in the most remarkable way, with a very, very small spend in comparison to the other parties.
Recent analysis has shown that Farage has also effectively used TikTok, an app particularly popular among millennials and Gen Z, with higher levels of engagement than Labour and the Tories.
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“I’ll tell you something, the enthusiasm for what we stand for, that is now growing rapidly among Gen Z, is unlike anything I’ve ever seen before with the Brexit Party or with Ukip. I don’t think it has yet quite converted into votes. A lot of them are 17 and a lot of them haven’t voted and many said they weren’t registered but there is something remarkable happening there.”
A poll by JL Partners last week put Reform in second place behind Labour among 16 and 17-year-olds, with 23 per cent saying they would vote for the party. Among boys of that age, they were tied for first, polling at 35 per cent. “If Keir Starmer really is going to introduce votes at 16,” said Scarlett Maguire of JL Partners ,“it might give Labour a big advantage over the Conservatives but not necessarily overall.”
On TikTok, the Conservatives have 73,600 followers, Labour 221,100 and Reform 227,8000. But this pales in comparison with Farage’s personal account, which has 853,000 fans. An average video of his generates over half a million views, and his videos have been “liked” 15 million times.
There is Farage in the back of a car, singing along to Eminem’s Without Me. Lyrics: “Guess who’s back, back again.” Caption: “Good morning, Rishi Sunak.”
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There is Farage in the pub, pint in hand, watching England. But also Farage looking directly into the camera, explaining his case.
“The kids like Farage. He sort of taps into them in a way the rest of us don’t,” says a teacher in a Hertfordshire state school. “He speaks a language the students understand.”
On TikTok, Labour and the Conservatives tend to recycle memes, says Jonah, 16, whose school in Wiltshire also turned turquoise. Farage largely just speaks to the camera: appealing directly to the audience. And he’s connecting. Jonah’s classmates like Farage because “he is actually speaking to them”. Supporting Reform has become “a bit of a trend. You see the comments where everyone is like ‘vote Reform’ and because it’s a trend everyone will follow.”
In part, this is a tale as old as time: teenagers falling in behind something their friends think is cool. Another factor, equally timeless, is boys messing around, trying to shock their elders. A recent TikTok shows a Liverpudlian schoolboy putting his cross next to Reform on a mocked-up ballot and then jumping on to the table in the middle of his classroom and singing Rule Britannia. “We’re just joking, sir, we’re just joking,” one teacher reports his students laughing after declaring their allegiance to Farage and expressing anti-immigrant sentiments.
But there is another factor at play here. Teenagers “like the message that you’re living in a failing state,” says Howes. The major parties have “beaten young people into a pulp and then they say you should be grateful and want more”, says Will Peacock, a 22-year-old Reform activist from
North Yorkshire. “I often reverse JFK: ‘What does my country do for me?’ I can’t afford a house. Young people are too intimidated to go into town centre … Reform seem to actually want to attract people.”
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During his visit to a boxing gym in Clacton last week (which was, of course, documented on
TikTok) Farage spoke about the “emasculation” of young men. “Look at the football. You know, they’re told: Go to Germany. Please don’t drink more than two pints of beer. You what? Don’t chant at the football matches. You what? Oh, and don’t tell jokes that might offend the Germans. I mean, come on. We are trying to stop young men being young men. That’s why [the misogynist influencer Andrew] Tate got the following he got. So maybe I’m part of a similar phenomenon.”
JL Partners’ poll speaks to a broader discontent with the political mainstream among many young people: a third of 16 to 17-year-old girls who say they would vote say they would vote Green. If you include the teenagers who say they would not vote at all, not voting becomes the most popular option. And this moment for Reform may be a flash in the pan. “In six weeks’ time none of these
kids are going to care about politics. So when Nigel Farage is talking about voting reform or
whatever I don’t think they are going to be listening,” says one teacher. And they may grow out of it. Older teens seem less enthused: according to Lord Ashcroft’s polling, only 8 per cent of 18 to 24-year-olds voted for Reform, putting them fifth behind the Lib Dems.
For now, however, the Reform leader can bask in the affection of his unlikely youth following.
“Nigel, may you do the famous line?” a young man asks Farage in another TikTok. “Which line?” Farage asks. “You know the one.”
“Oh. I’ve got it.” Farage grins benevolently, and turns to the camera. “You all laughed at me. But you’re not laughing now.”
