Blow To Zack Polanski As Poll Puts Green Party Support Into Single Figures

The Greens have dropped to just nine percentage points in one devastating poll days after losing a crunch by-election and facing major backlash over a controversial party conference.

An Opinium survey for the Observer put the left-wing party on their lowest share of the vote since Zack Polanski was elected as Green leader a year ago.

It’s a steep decline compared to where the party were during the May local elections, when Opinium put the Greens on 16 points.

Support among young people, aged 18-34, has particularly waned, dropping from 28% to 14% in just five months.

The poll also found Polanski was the most unpopular of all the party leaders.

The findings come shortly after the Green Party leader lost the Holborn and St Pancras by-election while Labour retained the seat with a majority of 3,000 votes.

Polanski is also being accused of a lack of leadership after he abstained from a divisive vote at the Green Party’s autumn conference.

Green members ended up voting in favour of a motion to declare “Zionism is racism” by 1,022 votes to 813, and called for a “single democratic Palestinian state in all of historic Palestine”.

The move sparked international backlash amid widespread accusations of antisemitism, with some calling for the Green Party leader to resign.

Polanski, who is Jewish and says he was “raised in a Zionist household”, sparked further controversy when he refused to say if he believes Israel should exist on Friday.

Andrew Feinstein – who ran as a left-wing independent candidate in Holborn and St Pancras in 2024 – told Times Radio the “Zionism is racism” motion most likely cost Polanski the by-election.

He said: “I think it probably did cost the Greens, I don’t think huge numbers of votes, I think small numbers of votes.”

But he added: “You know, the difficulty for them is that whichever way that vote went, it was going to cost them some voters.”

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