With Labor still riding high in the polls, one expert has suggested the party is all but guaranteed to form the next government.
A general election will take place in the second half of this year, with Rishi Sunak having ruled out Britain going to the polls on May 2. But Tory hopes of a revival before the country’s vote look increasingly unlikely. A budget that saw cuts to national insurance has done nothing to revive the party’s fortunes, and it still trails Labor by some distance.
Now respected polling expert John Curtice has given his opinion – and it makes for even grimmer reading for Sunak. He told Politico’s Playbook that there is a “99% chance that Labor will form the next government.”
Curtice added: “Are you surprised? There is clearly a very slim chance that the Tories will be in government after the autumn.”
His comments come after Tory peer Lord Frost predicted the party would suffer a heavy election loss. Frost, the former British Brexit negotiator, said recent polls have proven to him that the Tories are “going to lose and we are going to lose badly.”
The latest polls continue to highlight a notable decline in the fortunes of the Tories, who held a 21-point lead over Labor in the YouGov polls in April 2020. That margin has since reversed, with Labor now in a leading position in the election year.
Ahead of the next election, Yahoo News UK looks at how the polls have changed, what’s behind it and what the latest odds are.
What do the opinion polls say?
YouGov’s voting intentions tracker (see chart below), which has been regularly surveying voters since January 2020, shows the extent to which support for the Tories has collapsed – and support for Labor has risen.
In their latest poll, published last week, Labour’s dominance under Sir Keir Starmer continues, making grim reading for Sunak.
Recent data – covering March 19 and 20 – shows Labor on 44%, the Conservatives on 19%, Reform UK on 15%, the Lib Dems on 9%, the Greens on 8%, SNP on 3% and Plaid Cymru at 1%. . The results are particularly bad for Sunak as they show the Tory vote share falling to the same level as its low under former Prime Minister Liz Truss, while Reform UK reaches its highest score yet.
Meanwhile, Redfield and Wilton showed similar results, with Labor on 42% and the Tories on 22%. Reform also received similar figures, namely 14% in the survey.
What are the latest odds?
As of March 14, Oddschecker – a website that compares odds from different bookmakers – had Labor at 17/2 to win the most seats. This means that a £10 punt would only earn £11.18.
The Conservatives are 17/2 to win the most seats. Bookmakers consider this so unlikely that a £10 bet at these odds would return £95.
What went wrong for the Tories?
Why have the polls changed so dramatically? It is worth looking back on four extremely eventful years in British politics.
Tory support peaked at 53% in April 2020 (with Labor at 32%), months after the party’s stunning success in the 2019 general election and Boris Johnson’s promise to “get Brexit done”. That month also saw Starmer take over as Labor leader from Jeremy Corbyn.
This was also done in the spirit of national unity after the outbreak of the COVID pandemic that almost killed Johnson himself. The then Prime Minister had been discharged from hospital five days before this particular survey was conducted.
Throughout the rest of the year there was a drop in support amid the chaos over COVID rules, with the Tories falling to 35% in November 2020, compared to Labor on 40%.
However, Britain’s successful COVID vaccination program offered a way out of lockdown and opinion polls improved with it. Tory support peaked at 41% in June 2021, while Labor was at 30%.
By October that year there was a feeling that Johnson was untouchable. At the Tory party conference, the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg noted that the Prime Minister was “in full control of his party and politically dominant in the country”.
But this quickly fell apart with the Partygate scandal, which came to light in November that year. Time and time again reports emerged that government and Tory staff – including Johnson – had taken part in lockdown-era social gatherings when their own COVID rules had prohibited this. By January 2022, Tory support had fallen to 28%, while Labor was at 38%.
Johnson struggled on but never recovered and a wave of ministerial resignations forced him to resign in July that year.
His successor, Truss, then embarked on perhaps the most disastrous premiership in history, marked by the catastrophic ‘mini-budget’, which included £45 billion in unfunded tax cuts, leading to an economic crisis. Like Johnson, she lost the confidence of Tory MPs – and voters – and was forced to resign.
Her 49-day spell as Prime Minister was the shortest in history, with Tory support plummeting to 19% (with Labor on 56%) the day after she announced her resignation in October 2022.
Sunak, who had lost to Truss in last month’s Tory leadership election, took over. However, as YouGov’s voting intent chart above shows, he has failed to reach voters. Tory support stood at 23% two days after he took office, and recent surveys showed it falling or staying at the same level.
In short, the polls, not to mention other factors such as notable by-election victories for Starmer’s Labour, point towards a Labor government – whenever an election takes place.