Survey indicates strong defeat of Conservatives for Labor in the United Kingdom

London (Reuters) – British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Party is doomed to a heavy defeat in national elections scheduled for this year, according to a seat projection published on Wednesday (3), which showed the Opposition Labor Party winning over 400 seats.

The model of YouGov, which predicts results in individual parliamentary seats based on estimated vote share, projected that Sunak’s Conservatives would win just 155 seats and Labor would win with 403 seats. The British Parliament has 650 seats.

Polls have consistently shown Labour’s double-digit lead over the Conservatives ahead of an election that Sunak has said he hopes to call in the second half of the year.

Political turmoil

The Conservatives have been in government, either in coalition or alone, since 2010, but have had five different prime ministers in that period, as the vote in the United Kingdom to leave the European Union and the scandal over its handling of the Covid crisis -19 have led to continued political turmoil.

The poll indicated that Sunak is still struggling to gain momentum following a tax-cut Budget last month and ahead of local elections in May. The model showed that the Conservatives are doing slightly worse – and Labor better – than when YouGov last published this projection in January.

YouGov now projects that the Conservatives would win fewer seats than in 1997, when they won just 165 seats in a crushing defeat to the Labor Party, led by Tony Blair.

Among the prominent Conservative MPs who could lose their seats are Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt and former leadership candidate Penny Mordaunt, YouGov said.

The model projected that Labor would fall short of the 418 seats won under Blair, with the projected 154-seat majority also lower than the 179-seat majority won in 1997.

YouGov interviewed 18,761 British adults from March 7 to March 27 for the survey. The number is many times higher than regular opinion polls and YouGov said the method correctly predicted the previous two elections.

YouGov said the main election result based on the model would see Labor with 41% of the vote and the Conservatives with 24%, although it warned that the results could look different to regular polls due to the treatment of those who have no intention of voting in the time.