Tories have squeezed the Brexit orange dry
Support for Boris Johnson amongst voters may have peaked, according to polling expert Sir John Curtice.
Opinions polls have so far put the Tories on course to win a majority, with YouGov’s poll on Wednesday giving the party an 11-point lead over Labour, delivering a majority of 68 in the Commons.
The Strathclyde University professor of politics said: “The story of this election so far is that both the Tories and Labour have made progress.
“The Tories have squeezed the Brexit Party vote and Labour have squeezed the Liberal Democrat vote.
“The potential problem the Tories face now is that they have pretty much squeezed all the juice out of the Brexit orange.
“So there is a question mark as to whether the Tories have reached a high water mark in their support.
“But there is still plenty of potential for Labour to squeeze the Lib Dem vote further, which would potentially narrow the lead.”
He added: “The Tories’ strategy has worked so far in that it has gobbled up the Leave vote but that strategy may now have reached its maximum.
“It means they will have to hope Labour doesn’t make progress at the Liberal Democrats’ expense or the Liberal Democrats don’t make progress at the Tories’ expense among Remain voters.”
Meanwhile, an Ipsos MORI survey for STV on Thursday put support in Scotland for the SNP at 44%, the Tories 26%, Labour 16% and the Lib Dems 11%.
Sir John said: “Given how marginal the seats are in Scotland, just a very small difference in the SNP can make a big difference to their seat tally.
“The SNP can be reasonably confident of getting something like 40% of the vote. But whether it is two points below or above could mean all the difference between the SNP being able to claim they have made a major advance because they have a lot more seats and the SNP seemingly not doing a great deal more than profiting from Labour’s misfortune.”