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Rishi Sunak is on track to become the first sitting prime minister ever to lose their seat at a general election, according to a new poll released on Wednesday that predicted a catastrophic result for the Tories.
Labour could win 516 MPs, which would hand Sir Keir Starmer a colossal 382-seat majority — far outstripping Tony Blair’s majority in his 1997 and 2001 landslides — the analysis by Savanta and Electoral Calculus for The Telegraph showed.
It forecast the Conservatives could slump to as few as 53 seats, down from 365 in the 2019 election, while the Liberal Democrats could climb to 50 seats, up from 11, to rival the Tories as a leading opposition party.
Two other surveys published the same day gave slightly less disastrous — though still dismal — forecasts for the Conservatives, highlighting the variation between different multilevel regression and post-stratification (MRP) analyses, which predict the result on a seat-by-seat basis.
However, all three matched other recent polls showing the Tories are headed for a crushing defeat on July 4.
An MRP survey by YouGov for The Times forecast that Labour would win 425 MPs, giving Starmer a majority of 200, while the Tories would plunge to 108 MPs. It predicted Sunak would retain his seat.
Meanwhile an MRP poll by More In Common, a political consultancy, said Labour would win 406 MPs, meaning an 162 majority for Starmer, with the Conservatives on 155 MPs.
The results of the More In Common survey were the most favourable for Sunak’s party of recent large-scale polls, even though the model predicted the Tories were still headed for a sizeable defeat.
It also found Chancellor Jeremy Hunt would lose his seat to the Lib Dems and defence secretary Grant Shapps would be defeated by Labour.
The Savanta and Electoral Calculus model indicated Reform UK would win no seats, meaning an eighth failure to get elected to Westminster by Nigel Farage, the party’s leader.
It forecast that Sunak would lose his seat of Richmond and Northallerton in North Yorkshire — the first time a sitting prime minister would be ousted at an election. The prime minister won a 27,210 majority at the last election, before the boundary review altered the make-up of his constituency.
The prime minister has been campaigning in constituencies where the Conservatives won large majorities in the 2019 election, while senior Tories have shifted to warning of preventing Labour achieving a “supermajority”.
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