The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
May insists the only poll that matters is on June 8
Latest poll indicates country is heading for hung parliament
Theresa May has played down polling that puts her on course to lose the general election.
She insisted the only poll that matters is the June 8 vote after the seat projection study suggested the UK faces a hung parliament.
The constituency-by-constituency estimate for The Times by YouGov indicates the Conservative Party could lose 20 seats and lose its majority, while Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour may gain 28 seats.
The analysis is based on a complex model and suggests Mrs May’s gamble of calling a snap election in the hope of a landslide win could backfire.
During a visit to Plymouth Fisheries, Mrs May said: “The only poll that matters is the one that’s going to take place on June 8 and then people will have a choice as to who they want to see as leader, who they want to see as Prime Minister taking this country forward in the future – me or Jeremy Corbyn.”
YouGov’s analysis puts the Tories on 310 seats, down from the 330 they went into the election campaign with and 16 short of a majority.
Labour would get 257 seats, up from 229, the Liberal Democrats 10, up from the nine Tim Farron’s party held when the election was called, the SNP 50, the Greens one and Plaid Cymru three.
Those figures are from the model’s central estimate, which acknowledges a large range of variation.
A good night for the Tories could see Mrs May’s party pick up 345 seats – a net gain of 15, but still well short of the majority she would have hoped to secure following the decision to go to the country.
A bad night could see the Tories plummet to 274 seats.
YouGov’s model draws on the data collected from around 50,000 panellists quizzed on their voting intention over the course of a week and uses a recently-developed technique called multilevel regression and post-stratification (MRP).
YouGov chief executive Stephan Shakespeare said the data could change dramatically between now and June 8.
“The data suggests that there is churn on all fronts, with the Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats all likely to both lose and gain seats,” he wrote in The Times.
“Based on the model’s current estimates, some seats are likely to change hands along EU referendum dividing lines.
“This is just a snapshot based on data from the past seven days and people can and do change their minds in the closing days of a general election campaign.
“Furthermore, it would not take a slight fall in Labour’s share and a slight increase in the Conservatives’ to see Theresa May returning to No 10 with a healthy majority.”