Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Party are heading for a historic defeat according to three opinion polls.
Polling by YouGov showed Keir Starmer would win 425 parliamentary seats in Britain’s 650-strong House of Commons. This is the most in its history. Savanta predicted 516 seats for Labour and More in Common gave it 406.
The three polls are largely in line with previous surveys predicting a Labour victory. But they show the scale of the Conservatives’ defeat could be even worse than previously thought.
Sunak’s task has been made harder by the return of Nigel Farage. Farage is a right-wing populist, whose Reform UK party threatens to split the right-of-centre vote.
Britain has a first-past-the-post electoral system. This means Reform could pick up millions of votes across the country without winning any individual seats.
YouGov predicted Reform would win five seats and Savanta none. More in Common did not give a figure for Reform.
The Savanta poll said Sunak could even lose his own seat in northern England. This was once considered a safe Conservative constituency.
The British prime minister has acknowledged that people are frustrated with him. It is not just him. All three surveys projected several senior government ministers, including finance minister Jeremy Hunt, were on course to lose their seats.
Most opinion polls currently place Keir Starmer’s Labour about 20 percentage points ahead of the governing Conservatives in the national vote share.
Other polls have also presented a grim picture for Sunak. One pollster predicted “electoral extinction” for the Conservatives.
With inputs from Reuters
