Team Blitz India
BRITISH Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Party faces a record defeat in the July 4 election, according to three opinion polls. The Labour Party has been predicted to comfortably win a large majority after 14 years in the opposition.
According to YouGov, a global public opinion and data company, the Labour Party was expected to win 425 parliamentary seats in the 650-strong House of Commons. While market research consultancy Savanta predicted 516 seats for Labour, strategy and communications consultancy More in Common gave it 406. YouGov had the Conservatives on 108 and the Liberal Democrats on 67, while Savanta predicted the Conservatives would take 53 parliamentary seats and the Liberal Democrats 50. More in Common forecast 155 and 49 seats respectively.
The MRP surveys
Chris Hopkins, Political Research Director at Savanta, said its projection put Labour on course “for a historic majority”, according to Reuters The three polls were so-called multilevel regression and post-stratification (MRP) surveys, an approach that uses voters’ age, gender, education and other variables to predict results in every British voting district. Pollsters used the method to successfully predict the 2017 British election result, it said. Sunak, who last week pledged to cut 17 billion pounds of taxes for working people if re-elected, has failed to turn the polls around so far in a campaign littered with missteps. The Savanta poll, published by the Telegraph newspaper, said Sunak could even lose his own parliamentary seat in northern England, once considered a safe Conservative constituency.All three surveys projected several senior ministers may lose their seats.
No California move
Most opinion polls currently place Keir Starmer’s Labour about 20 percentage points ahead of the governing Conservatives in the national vote share. Meanwhile, Sunak has dismissed rumours that he planned to move to California, US, following a possible election defeat for his Conservative Party. In an interview with the network ITV, he pledged to stay on in the UK regardless of the election outcome. Former Tory minister Lord Goldsmith had accused him of planning a move to California. Reacting to which, Sunak said, “It’s simply not true. I mean, it’s just simply not true”.
