Fresh poll predicts Tories will win just 72 seats in next parliament
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Two polls published today spell bad news for Rishi Sunak, with one showing a drop of four points and the other that his party is on course to pick up just 72 seats.
A poll by Savanta for The Sunday Telegraph showed the Tories are down four points to just 21% of the vote – the lowest by that pollster since the dying days of Theresa May’s premiership in early 2019.
In a boost for Nigel Farage, the poll showed Reform UK up three points with 13% of the vote.
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A separate Survation poll for Best for Britain, published by The Times, predicted the Tories would win just 72 seats in the next parliament, compared with 456 for Labour.
The results would give Labour a majority of 262 seats – far surpassing the landslide Labour achieved under Sir Tony Blair in 1997 – while the Liberal Democrats would pick up 56 seats, Reform seven and the Greens one seat.
The Savanta poll, which was carried out from 12-14 June and involved 2,045 adults aged 18 and over, also showed Labour up two points on 46% of the vote.
Chris Hopkins, political research director at Savanta, said the poll pointed to “nothing short of electoral extinction for the Conservative Party”.
“The hopes of Conservative candidates are being shot to pieces by poll after poll showing the Conservative Party in increasingly dire straits – and we’re only halfway through the campaign,” he said.
“There’s a real sense that things could still get worse for the Conservatives, and with postal votes about to drop through millions of letterboxes, time is already close to running out for Rishi Sunak.”
The two surveys follow a YouGov poll on Thursday night that put Nigel Farage’s party ahead of the Tories for the first time – on 19% of the vote, compared with 18% for the Conservatives.
The development prompted Mr Farage to declare Reform as the “opposition to Labour” going into the election.
Mr Sunak has repeatedly argued that a vote for Reform would “give a blank cheque to Labour” – something Mr Farage has dismissed.
Survation surveyed 22,000 people and was conducted between 31 May and 13 June. Mr Farage announced he was the new leader of Reform and that he was standing as a candidate in Clacton, Essex, on 4 June.
