Three British opinion polls released late on Saturday presented a grim picture for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Party, and one pollster warned that the party faced “electoral extinction” in July 4’s election.
The polls come just over halfway through the election campaign, after a week in which both the Conservatives and Labour set out their manifestos, and shortly before voters begin to receive postal ballots.
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Market research company Savanta found 46% support for Keir Starmer’s Labour Party, up 2 points on the previous poll five days earlier, while support for the Conservatives dropped 4 points to 21%. The poll was conducted from June 12 to June 14 for the Sunday Telegraph.
Labour’s 25-point lead was the largest since the premiership of Sunak’s predecessor, Liz Truss, whose tax cut plans prompted investors to dump British government bonds, pushing up interest rates and forcing a Bank of England intervention. “Our research suggests that this election could be nothing short of electoral extinction for the Conservative Party,” Chris Hopkins, political research director at Savanta, said.
A separate poll by Survation, published by the Sunday Times, predicted the Conservatives could end up with just 72 seats in the 650-member House of Commons - the lowest in their nearly 200-year history - while Labour would win 456 seats.
The poll was conducted from May 31 to June 13. In percentage terms, the Survation poll had Labour on 40% and the Conservatives on 24%, while former Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party - a right-wing challenger to the Conservatives - was on 12%.
A third poll, by Opinium for Sunday’s Observer, and conducted from June 12 to June 14, also showed Labour on 40%, the Conservatives on 23% and Reform on 14%, with the two largest parties yielding ground to smaller rivals.
They’ve done better than expected in every election I can remember. Almost part of the playbook for them. It’s been said a thousand times, but it can still be said a thousand more. You have to vote to get this extinction so don’t read the polls as a done deal.
Yes, but I wonder how many of the “shy Tories” will now be “shy Reform”. Or how many who say they will vote for Reform will just vote as they always have. We’ll find out!
It’s my opinion that a HUGE proportion of people identifying with Reform will get cold feet in the voting booth and vote Tory.
Be interesting to see. I agree. I think split won’t happen in the end and Reform will only take the most of far right. But it will be a while before the Tories are centre enough to win power again.
Reform stealing the right wing voters might not push the Tories to the centre, it could push them further to the right to try to win them back.
It worked for UKIP when the Tories promised a referendum to win their voters.
I think in chasing those pulled to the crazy far right, the Tories are hemorrhaging anyone even vaguely centre.
The only way the Tories get into power is pulling in their crazier voters to the centre, where the bulk of everyone else is.
Exactly this. We cannot just take a Labour win for granted and risk staying at home or protest voting.