UK PM Sunak’s Conservatives set for heavy election defeat, polls forecast

LONDON: Three opinion polls on Wednesday predicted crushing defeats for British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives at a July 4 election, forecasting the opposition Labour Party would easily win a large majority.

Polling by YouGov showed Keir Starmer-led Labour was on track to win 425 parliamentary seats in Britain’s 650-strong House of Commons, the most in its history. Savanta predicted 516 seats for Labour and More in Common gave it 406.

Savanta predicted Labour would take 516 parliamentary seats, the Conservatives 53, and the Liberal Democrats 50. YouGov had Labour on 425 seats, the Conservatives 108, and the Liberal Democrats on 67. More in Common predicted 406, 155, and 49 seats respectively.

The three polls were all multilevel regression and post-stratification (MRP) surveys, an approach that uses voters’ age, gender, education and other variables to predict results in every British voting district. Pollsters used the method to successfully predict the 2017 British election result.

They are largely in line with previous surveys predicting a Labour victory after 14 years of Conservative government, but show the scale of the Conservatives’ defeat could be even worse
than previously thought.

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YouGov forecast just 108 seats for the Conservatives, around 32 lower from a similar poll conducted two weeks earlier.

Both Savanta and YouGov predicted that the party of Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher could be left with the lowest number of seats in its near 200-year history contesting elections.

The Savanta poll, published by the Telegraph newspaper, said Sunak could even lose his own parliamentary seat in northern England, once considered a safe Conservative constituency, with the contest currently too close to call.

All three surveys also projected several senior government ministers, including finance minister Jeremy Hunt, were on course to lose their seats.

They did not predict a huge number of seats for right-wing Reform UK led by Nigel Farage, which has seen a surge in popular support in other opinion polls. YouGov gave the it five seats and Savanta none. More in Common did not give a figure for Reform.

Most opinion polls currently place Keir Starmer’s Labour about 20 percentage points ahead of the governing Conservatives in the national vote share.