British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak could become the first sitting prime minister to lose their seat at a general election, according to a shock new poll. The main opposition left-of-center Labour Party is on course to win 516 seats in the July 4 election, which would deliver them a supermajority of 382, more than former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s historic 1997 victory.
According to analysis published Wednesday by market research company Savanta, conducted in partnership with Electoral Calculus and the Telegraph, the ruling center-right Conservative Party is on track to win 53 seats, down from 365 in the 2019 election, with the centrist Liberal Democrats expected to run the Tories close in becoming the official opposition party in the next Parliament.
The left-leaning Scottish National Party is set to win eight seats, while Wales’ pro-independence political party Plaid Cymru is expected to win four. Britain’s right-wing Reform UK and the environmentalist Greens are seen failing to pick up any seats.
Of the 632 seats being contested in two weeks’ time, Savanta said that 175 seats were currently “too close to call.” These include a raft of senior Conservative seats, including Sunak’s seat in Richmond and Northallerton in North Yorkshire, Interior Minister James Cleverly’s seat in Braintree in Essex, and Finance Minister Jeremy Hunt’s seat in Godalming and Ash in Surrey.
Savanta said it interviewed 17,812 respondents aged 18 and over online between June 7-18. The poll used multiple regression and post stratification modelling (MRP), sometimes referred to as MRP, to provide estimates of voting intentions nationwide.
MRP uses a voters’ age, gender, and other demographic characteristics to forecast vote shares in each constituency and therefore predict a likely winner in each seat and the overall result of the election.
Savanta’s analysis echoes a flurry of polls in recent weeks that typically indicate the Labour Party is on track for a historic election victory. Sunak has previously downplayed concerns over Conservative poll ratings, saying late last month that “the only poll that matters is the poll on July 4th.
Alistair Campbell, Labour’s former director of communications for Blair, said on Thursday that he doesn’t believe the Conservatives are on track for a landslide election defeat next month. I just do not for one second believe that the Conservatives are going to get virtually wiped out. I just don’t believe it,” Campbell told CNBC’s Squawk Box Europe.
For Labour to win a majority of one, they have got to get a bigger swing than we got in 1997 and Clement Attlee got in 1945. I just think there is something going very, very wrong with these polls,” Campbell said.
