According to three major polls on Wednesday, including one that projected even the premier will lose his seat, Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Party is heading for an electoral wipeout in the UK general election on July 4.
For next month’s vote, a seat-by-seat analysis by Savanta and Electoral Calculus for the Daily Telegraph found the Tories are on track to win just 53 seats, which would be an all-time low for the party that is 190 years old. YouGov put them on 108 seats — which would also be a record — while a More in Common survey for the News Agents podcast projected the governing party slipping to 155 seats. That would be ten less than in 1997 when Conservatives last lost power to Labour.
Any of those results would be devastating for the Conservatives, who like to style themselves as being Britain’s natural ruling party and would likely result in a long spell in opposition. Even worse for Sunak, according to the Savanta survey he will lose his own seat at Richmond and Northallerton an unprecedented fate concerning serving prime ministers although Premier Tory Arthur Balfour lost his seat after resigning as premier in 1906.
YouGov said: “The Conservative party is set for its biggest defeat ever.” It also said that it expected “significant losses” across South West England, South East England and East of England by the governing party.
All three polls see Keir Starmer easily becoming Prime Minister: More in Common predicts an opposition with a majority of 162 which itself approaches Labour’s best-ever election result of Tony Blair (in 1997) with a majority of 179. YouGov forecasts a Labour majority of more than two hundred while Savanta puts this figure at three hundred and eighty-two.
Just five years ago such figures could only have been imagined when under Corbyn’s left-wing predecessor Jeremy Corbyn Labour suffered its worst electoral defeat since 1935. More in Common said Labour would win 406 seats, YouGov has them on 425 which is a record, and Savanta sees them winning 516 seats – almost four out of every five constituencies.
The trio of surveys all project the Liberal Democrats will make significant gains, recovering their status as the UK’s third party, which they lost in 2015 after being punished by the electorate for serving five years in coalition with the Tories. More in Common puts them on forty-nine seats up thirty-eight from last year while YouGov puts them on sixty-seven – also a record. Savanta, Sunak places them at fifty, almost level pegging with Tory numbers.
YouGov predicts that Nigel Farage’s Reform UK will win five parliamentary seats while the other two polls do not show him winning any seat despite having recently displaced the Conservatives in at least one national survey. On X social media platform More in Common Director Luke Tryl said that this may be because of long fieldwork periods not capturing Reform’s recent rise to prominence.
Also, there was a constituency poll conducted by Survation in Clacton where Farage is running as a candidate which showed he would easily win the seat with 42% compared to the Tory incumbent Giles Watling who polled at 27%. Survation surveyed 506 adults for Arron Banks who is a long-term ally of Farage.
The More in Common poll anticipated a smaller Labor majority than the other recent so-called multi-regression and post-stratification (MRP) models, but it would be 162 seats compared to the 66 seats won by former Tory Prime Minister Boris Johnson five years ago.
In a statement, Tryl said: “This projection sees the Conservatives only holding on to about 150 seats – one of the most favorable ones for them. This shows how deep in a hole they are and that they have barely two weeks to change things around.”
According to Savanta, Sunak will get 29% of votes in Richmond and Northallerton as opposed to his Labour rival Tom Wilson who will receive 34%. However, both surveys see the prime minister keeping his seat fairly comfortably.
