The final United Kingdom election polls present a bleak outlook for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives.
YouGov’s MRP poll predicts Keir Starmer’s Labour will secure 431 seats, an increase of 229 from 2019, while the Tories will drop to 102, losing 263 seats since the last election. These figures would give Labour a majority of 212, the largest in the party’s history. Ed Davey’s Liberal Democrats are projected to win 72 seats, an increase of 61.
Nigel Farage’s right-wing Reform UK is expected to win three seats. A substantial Labour landslide would significantly alter British politics, ending 14 years of Conservative rule under five prime ministers, during which Brexit and immigration debates have polarized the nation.
A More in Common poll released Wednesday predicted a 210-seat majority for Labour, showing the party with 430 seats, up 228 from the last election, while the Tories are down 239 seats to 126. The Lib Dems are set to return as the third party with 52 seats, an increase of 41, while the Scottish National Party (SNP) holds 16 seats, losing 32. Reform UK is projected to win two seats.
Another poll by Focaldata, also published Wednesday, suggested an even greater majority for Labour of 238, allocating the party 444 seats, with the Tories at 108. The Lib Dems would return as the third party with 57 seats, while the SNP holds just 15 of Scotland’s 57 seats. Reform UK is again projected to win two seats.
YouGov, a long-established pollster, accurately predicted a hung parliament in the 2017 general election through an MRP poll, while other polls indicated a strong majority for the Tories.
MRP (multi-level regression and post-stratification) polls use a significantly larger sample size and consider each person’s voting intention along with their demographic characteristics, such as age, income, occupation, and education level, as well as their past voting behavior. The pollster then maps these factors across the country, determining how many voters fit each characteristic in each constituency using data from sources like the latest census, enabling seat-by-seat predictions.
In the House of Commons, 326 out of 650 seats are needed for an overall majority. Labour’s last election-winning Prime Minister, Tony Blair, won the 1997 general election with a majority of 179 and won two subsequent elections with smaller majorities.
