The UK’s opposition Labour Party is on track for a landslide victory at the next general election, according to a new poll — with a higher than typical sample size — that is likely ramp up the pressure on Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
Labour could win 470 seats at the election, with the Tories plummeting to just 129, according to the baseline scenario of an MRP poll by Focaldata, which asked 10,140 people in Great Britain how they intend to vote. That would give Labour a huge majority of more than 140 seats, it said.
An MRP — or Multilevel Regression and Post-stratification — analysis aims to give a more detailed prediction than a standard opinion poll, by using a larger sample and taking local factors into account and predicting the result for each seat in Great Britain. Northern Ireland is not covered.
This is the first MRP poll under new constituency boundaries due to come in at the next election, which must be held by January 2025 at the latest.
Labour’s lead is actually smaller than the last time Focaldata ran an MRP poll, suggesting Sunak has won back some Tory voters following the Conservatives’ polling nadir during Liz Truss’s brief premiership.
The pollster also considered other possible scenarios that could reduce the chances of a big Labour victory.
If the right-wing Reform party was to stand aside for the Conservatives in their marginal seats, as the Brexit Party did in the 2019 election, Labour would win 401 seats and the Tories 201, the analysis showed.
But even in the worst-case scenario for Labour — in which the considerable bloc of undecided voters also break for the Tories, in addition to Reform standing aside — it would still be the biggest party in a hung Parliament, it found.
