In May 2026, Nigel Farage leads his party to 28% in the polls — first place nationally — but carries a net approval rating of -20%. Ed Davey leads the Liberal Democrats to 13% in the polls — a distant fourth — but is the only party leader in positive territory on personal approval at +5%. This paradox tells us something important about how British voters think about politics in 2026.
The Approval Ratings in Full
The May 2026 approval tracking data, aggregated across five pollsters, shows the following leadership ratings. Keir Starmer: net approval -18% (38% approve, 56% disapprove). Nigel Farage: net -20% (36% approve, 56% disapprove). Kemi Badenoch: net -12% (33% approve, 45% disapprove). Ed Davey: net +5% (38% approve, 33% disapprove). Green co-leader Carla Denyer: net 0% (28% approve, 28% disapprove).
The striking finding is that Farage, who leads the party with the highest vote share, has worse personal approval than Badenoch, who leads the party in fourth place. And Davey, whose Lib Dems are polling at 13%, is the only leader in positive net territory. This reflects structural differences in the voter coalitions and recognition levels of the different leaders.
The politician approval tracker maintains monthly data for all major party leaders and key cabinet ministers. It is one of the most frequently consulted tools on this site because approval ratings often diverge from party polling in illuminating ways.
Why Farage Has a Negative Approval Rating
Nigel Farage is the most recognisable politician in Britain. Polls show 97% of voters know who he is — a higher recognition rate than the Prime Minister. This ubiquity is both his greatest asset and the source of his negative approval rating. Very few voters are undecided about Farage. He polarises opinion sharply: among those who know him, 36% approve and 56% disapprove.
The disapproval of Farage is concentrated among graduates, younger voters, and urban residents — exactly the demographic moving toward the Greens or Labour. This disapproval is intense and unlikely to soften: it is based on deep disagreement with his political positions and persona, not on unfamiliarity or uncertainty. For the 72% of the electorate that does not intend to vote Reform, Farage is actively off-putting.
For the 28% who do intend to vote Reform, however, Farage’s approval rating among his own voters is +78% — extraordinarily high for any political leader. This combination of deep tribal loyalty from a large base and deep repulsion from everyone else produces the statistical outcome of -20% overall while leading in the horse-race polls.
Why Davey Has a Positive Approval Rating
Ed Davey’s positive approval rating reflects a very different dynamic. He is far less well-known than Farage — approximately 65% of voters say they are familiar with him. Among those who do know him, approval is mildly positive: 38% approve, 33% disapprove. This mild positivity extends across the political spectrum in a way that Farage’s ratings do not.
Davey benefits from the perception that he is a reasonable, non-threatening political figure. His antics on the campaign trail in 2024 — paddleboarding, zip-lining — generated mockery but also a kind of affection. He is not seen as a threat by people who disagree with him, which is unusual in the current political climate.
The problem for the Liberal Democrats is that positive approval does not automatically translate to voting intention. Voters who say they like Davey often add that they are not planning to vote Lib Dem, either because they prefer another party’s policies or because they do not believe the Lib Dems can win in their constituency. Approval is a necessary but not sufficient condition for vote share.
Starmer: The Likeable Underperformer
Keir Starmer’s approval ratings illustrate a different variant of the same paradox. His net approval of -18% is poor, but it is consistently above his party’s polling deficit. Voters who have stopped intending to vote Labour still rate Starmer as competent and decent — just not sufficient reason to vote for a party whose actual performance in government they are disappointed with.
The “best Prime Minister” question captures this clearly. Starmer leads at 22%, with Farage at 18% and Badenoch at 14%. A Prime Minister rated best for the job by 22% of voters while his party polls at 18% is over-performing on the personal metric. This is both a sign of his political asset and a measure of how serious Labour’s institutional problems are.
Badenoch: Improving but Still Negative
Kemi Badenoch’s -12% net approval is the least bad of the three negative leaders, and her trajectory has been improving since a disastrous early period. Her cultural conservative messaging resonates strongly with Conservative party members even if it has not broadened the party’s electorate. Among Conservative voters, her approval rating is +54% — a necessary base to maintain party unity but insufficient for the wider audience needed to win back seats from both Reform and Labour.
What Approval Ratings Actually Predict
Academic research on British political leadership suggests that leader approval ratings are most predictive of vote choice in the final weeks of an election campaign, when undecided voters are making their choice and tend to focus on the leaders rather than detailed policy positions. In the mid-term, approval ratings are better understood as atmospheric indicators than direct predictors of election outcomes.
The current approval landscape, with no leader in strongly positive territory and Reform leading the horse-race despite Farage’s personal negatives, suggests a political environment driven more by issue positions and anti-establishment sentiment than by traditional personal leadership appeal. The approval tracker shows these numbers monthly and will become increasingly important as 2029 approaches.