Fresh poll puts Labour and Tories neck and neck

THE Tory lead over Labour has been slashed by 16 points in a month, according to a new opinion poll published today which suggests the election race is neck and neck.

The Survation poll for Good Morning Britain put the Tories on 41.5% with Labour on 40.4%.

Today’s finding contrasts with a poll published yesterday, which suggested the Tories have an 11-point leader over Labour.

The new poll also comes as statistics show more than million voters have been added to the electoral roll – with Cardiff among the areas to have seen the largest increase.

The Conservatives had a 17-point lead with Survation at the start of May, but Labour’s rise reflects a campaign which more than half of those polled thought had been better than Theresa May’s.

Today’s latest poll put the Liberal Democrats on 6% and Ukip on 3%.

Half of those surveyed thought Mrs May would make a better prime minister than Jeremy Corbyn, but his personal credibility has increased 15 points to 36% since the first Survation/ GMB poll on May 5-6. Mrs May’s rating has dropped 10 points over the same period.

Some 51% of respondents thought Labour has had the best campaign – including 30% of Tory voters – while just 23% thought Mrs May’s party had performed better.

Survation polled 1,103 UK residents aged 18 and over by telephone on June 2 and 3.

Data was weighted to be representative of all UK adults.

The poll contrasts with yesterday’s ICM poll for the Guardian in which Theresa May’s party was unchanged on 45, 11 points clear of Labour, which was up one on 34%, while the Liberal Democrats were unchanged on 8% and Ukip on 5%.

Elsewhere, yesterday’s latest findings from YouGov’s modelling suggested the UK is heading towards a hung parliament, with the Conservatives on just 305 seats, down 25 from the 330 Mrs May’s party had when she called the election.

Meanwhile, a total of 46.9 million people are now eligible to vote on polling day, according to Press Association provisional data. This is up from 45.8 million in December 2016.

It is also higher than the number for the 2015 general election, which was 46.4 million.

Of the 1.1 million voters to have joined the electorate since 2016, almost a third (31%) are in constituencies in London and south-east England.

Of the top 50 seats with the biggest increase in electorate, 31 were won by Labour at the last election and 13 by the Conservatives.

Many of the top 50 are within areas that traditionally have a large student population, such as Leeds, Bristol, Cambridge, Cardiff and Brighton.

But only 11 of the top 50 could be classed as marginal seats, which saw MPs elected on majorities of up to 5,000 at the 2015 general election.

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