LONDON (AFP): Two polls published on Wednesday found the UK’s Labour party was set to win a record-breaking number of seats and the incumbent Conservatives due for a historic drubbing in next month’s general election.
With voters heading to the polls in just over two weeks time, the latest pair of nationwide surveys — by YouGov and Savanta/Electoral Calculus — showed Labour set to win either 425 or 516 out of 650 seats.
Either of the results would be the current opposition party’s best-ever return of MPs in a general election.
Meanwhile, the twin polls showed support for the Tories — in power since 2010 — plummeting to unprecedented lows, with one estimating they would win just 53 seats.
The Savanta and Electoral Calculus survey for the Daily Telegraph newspaper predicted Rishi Sunak would become the first sitting UK prime minister ever to lose their seat at a general election.
The poll, which forecasts three-quarters of Sunak’s cabinet also losing their seats, would hand Labour a majority of 382 — more than double the advantage enjoyed by ex-prime minister Tony Blair in 1997.
It also showed the centrist Liberal Democrats just three seats behind the Conservatives on 50, and the Scottish National Party losing dozens of seats north of the English border.
Record Tory defeat?
The YouGov survey predicted Sunak’s party would win in just 108 constituencies.
That was a drop of 32 on its prediction from two weeks ago, reflecting how badly the Conservatives’ election campaign is perceived to have gone.
The 108 seats the Tories are predicted to win in the poll would still be their lowest number in the party’s near 200-year history of contesting UK elections.
Sunak is widely seen as having run a lacklustre and error-strewn campaign, including facing near-universal criticism earlier this month for leaving early from D-Day commemoration events in France.
In contrast, Labour leader Keir Starmer, set to become prime minister if his party prevails on July 4, has sought to play it safe and protect his party’s poll leads.
YouGov also found anti-EU populist Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party on course to win five seats, including in the Clacton constituency in eastern England where the Brexit figurehead is standing.
Farage has said he will attempt to coopt what remains of the Conservative party if he is elected and it fares poorly on July 4.
