Tories facing 1997-style wipeout
♦ Most extensive election poll in five years predicts that party will retain just 169 seats ♦ Eleven Cabinet ministers forecast to be ousted in biggest collapse since 1906 ♦ Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour would win landslide majority of 120 – with 385 MPS
THE Conservatives are heading for an electoral wipeout on the scale of their 1997 defeat by Labour, the most authoritative opinion poll in five years has predicted.
The Yougov survey of 14,000 people forecasts that the Tories will retain just 169 seats, while Labour will sweep to power with 385 seats – giving Sir Keir Starmer a 120-seat majority.
Every Red Wall seat won from Labour by Boris Johnson in 2019 will be lost, the poll indicates, and Jeremy Hunt, the Chancellor, will be one of 11 Cabinet ministers to lose their seats.
The Tories will win 196 fewer seats than in 2019, more than the 178 Sir John Major lost in 1997.
The poll exposes the huge influence Reform UK is set to have on the election result. Although the Right-wing party would not win any seats, support for it would be the decisive factor in 96 Tory losses – the difference between a Labour majority and a hung Parliament.
The result would be the biggest collapse in support for a governing party since 1906, with an 11.5 per cent swing to Labour. It would all but guarantee Sir Keir’s party at least a decade in government, as no party with such a large majority has ever lost the subsequent election.
There is also bad news for the SNP, which is predicted to lose almost half of its seats to Labour, retaining only 25.
The poll – obtained using the same method that has accurately predicted the results of several recent elections – will add to the pressure on Rishi Sunak to pivot to a far more conservative agenda as he faces a crucial vote on his Rwanda policy this week. It will also be studied by Tory MPS who believe a change of leader before this year’s election is the only way to avoid disaster.
Writing for The Daily Telegraph, Lord Frost, the Conservative peer, describes the poll’s findings as “stunningly awful” for his party, saying it was facing “a 1997-style wipeout – if we are lucky”.
He adds that the only way to avoid defeat is “to be as tough as it takes on immigration, reverse the debilitating increases in tax, end the renewables tax on energy costs – and much more”.
James Johnson, a former No10 pollster, said the figures suggested any possible path to victory for the Conservatives had “all but vanished”.
He said the data showed the Tories were haemorrhaging votes from Leave supporters who backed them in 2019 and would be punished by those voters “if they do not get tough on migration – fast”.
The poll was commissioned by a group of Conservative donors called the Conservative Britain Alliance and carried out by Yougov, working with Lord Frost. It surveyed 14,000 respondents over the New Year – around seven times as many people as a typical poll.
Such a big sample size enabled Yougov to break down results by constitubritain’s ency using its Multi-level Regression and Post st ratification( MR P) method, which successfully forecast the 2017 and 2019 general election results and, more recently, those in Australia and Spain.
Unlike recent polls, which have given Labour an average lead of around 18 points across the electorate as a whole, the MRP poll predicts which seats will go to which party, giving a forecast of the actual election result.
It also factors in the large number of undecided voters and which way they are most likely to vote, known as electoral tightening. The results are, therefore, the most credible forecast of what would actually happen if there was an election tomorrow or early this year, based on current public opinion.
The 169 seats the Conservatives are predicted to win is only four more than the 165 they won in 1997. But because they now occupy more seats than in 1997, the scale of the losses would be bigger – with 196 fewer seats than Mr Johnson won in 2019.
A majority of 120 for Sir Keir would be larger than any majority in the past two decades and comparable to those secured by Margaret Thatcher in 1983 and 1987. The Liberal Democrats are set to win 48 seats.
The Conservatives will lose seats across the country, the poll forecasts. Labour will rebuild its Red Wall by winning back seats taken by the Tories in the North and Midlands in 2017 and 2019. Mr Sunak’s party will lose almost every seat in the north of England, more than 70 per cent of their seats in Yorkshire and more than half of their seats in the Midlands.
The Conservatives are also predicted to suffer heavy losses, mainly to the Liberal Democrats, in Blue Wall seats in the South they have held for decades.
Horsham, which the Conservatives won by 21,000 votes in 2019, and which has been represented by a Conservative since 1880, is expected to switch to the Liberal Democrats.
The results are primarily driven by a collapse in the Conservative vote rather than a surge in Labour’s. In constituencies across England and Wales, the Labour vote is up by an average of just 4 per cent compared with 2019, whereas the Conservative vote is down by an average of 18 per cent.
Modelling shows 80 per cent of those who voted for the Conservatives in 2019 but would not if an election was held tomorrow were Leave voters in the 2016
Brexit referendum. The collapse of the Conservative vote is driven by discontent on policy issues including illegal migration and the unpopularity of Mr Sunak.
The results forecast an election night packed with “Portillo moments”, when big beasts lose their seats in the way Michael Portillo, then a Tory high-flyer, unexpectedly did in 1997.
In 1997, seven Tory Cabinet ministers lost their seats. This year, it is predicted to be 11. Mr Hunt is on course to lose Godalming and Ash, the new seat for which he has been selected, to the Liberal Democrats.
Penny Mordaunt, a former Conservative leadership contender and the Leader of the House, is likely to lose Portsmouth North to Labour, despite winning with a 15,000 majority in 2019.
Grant Shapps, the Defence Secretary, who has a majority of more than 11,000, is set to lose Welwyn Hatfield to Labour, and Victoria Prentis, the Attorney General, is set to lose Banbury, which she won with a majority of 17,000 votes in 2019, also to Labour.
The results do not factor in tactical voting, which many experts believe could result in even more losses.
Sir Jacob Rees-mogg is predicted to cling on with 33 per cent of the vote to Labour’s 32 per cent in his North East Somerset seat, so Lib Dem voters, who account for 17 per cent of the constituency’s population, could topple him if some lend their votes to Labour.
Nor does the poll factor in a possible surge in votes for Reform if Nigel Farage decides to return as its leader later this year rather than Richard Tice, the current leader, staying in post.