(Bloomberg) — United Kingdom Prime Minister Rishi SunakThe Conservative Party is heading for a historic wipeout in the July 4 general election, according to three new polls published in Sunday newspapers.
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A Survation MRP poll published in the Times predicts opposition Labor will win a majority of 262 seats in Parliament, with the Conservatives reduced to just 72 seats. The Opinium poll for the Observer showed Labor with a 17-point lead, and Savanta predicted “electoral extinction” for Sunak's party in a poll for the Sunday Telegraph.
The figures illustrate how Sunak's weak position in the campaign has deteriorated since he called the surprise vote three weeks ago. They suggest the Conservatives were heading for their worst defeat since the party was formed two centuries ago, with less than half the seats they held after a defeat in 1906.
“Our research suggests that this election could be nothing short of electoral extinction for the Conservative Party,” said Chris Hopkins, director of political research at Savanta.
The Tories have begun to warn about the risks of giving Labor such a commanding majority. Former cabinet minister Robert Jenrick told the Telegraph that the UK could end up as an “elective dictatorship that will be equally unrestricted in raising taxes”.
The workers, for their part, warn the voters not to be complacent with the ballot boxes.
“This election is not yet settled,” said the shadow health secretary Wes Streeting he told Sky News on Sunday. “I don't want people to wake up to a nightmare in Downing Street on July 5.”
The Independent said voter confidence in the Tories on tax issues has collapsed. A Techne UK poll for the paper found that 36% trust Labor leader Keir Starmer on taxes, compared to 16% for Sunak.
In an interview with the Sunday Times, Sunak acknowledged that the economic backdrop is a challenge for the Tories, but that the nation has made a change.
“We've had a tough time,” Sunak told the Times in an interview published Sunday. “It's nobody's fault that we had a pandemic and then a war in Ukraine, and that's a huge source of the frustration and insecurity that people feel and all the damage it's done to our standard of living over the last years”.
“But I really think that after a lot of hard work and resilience from everyone, we've gotten through the worst of it and turned a corner. The economy is growing faster than all of our major competitors. Inflation is back to normal, wages are going up, energy bills are going down, so people, I hope, can start to feel more confident about the future.”
Survation's MRP work used 42,000 interviews from May 31 to June 13 and was the most detailed. He showed:
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Labor could take 443 seats in Parliament, compared to 83 for the Conservatives
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The Liberal Democrats are on track to win 53 seats.
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The reformist right-wing party has a “possibility” of winning 12 seats, including a narrow victory for its leader Nigel Farage.
Savanta's research suggested Labor has a 25-point lead, the biggest since Liz Truss's brief tenure as prime minister in 2022. She had Labor on 46% of the vote, the Conservatives on 21% and the reformists with 13%. The Liberal Democrats were in fourth place with 11%. This survey of 2,045 adults was conducted June 12-14.
“There is a real sense that things could get worse for the Tories,” said Hopkins, “Time is running out for Rishi Sunak.”
Opinium said the two main parties are on track for their lowest share of the vote since 1945, with voters drifting to other groups such as Reform and the Liberal Democrats.
He found that smaller parties had gained ground during the campaign. This bucked the pattern seen in 2019, where voters increasingly opted for the major parties as the campaign progressed.
–With help from Charlotte Hughes-Morgan.
(Updates with Streeting's remarks in the seventh paragraph.)
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