(London) Two weeks before the British legislative elections, two new polls on Wednesday placed Labor on the road to a historic victory against the Conservatives who have been in power for 14 years.
According to a YouGov poll, as the race stands, Labor would win 425 of the 650 seats in the British Parliament on July 4, “the largest number in the party’s history”, with 39% of the vote.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Tories would gain 108 seats, losing 257 MPs compared to the current composition of Parliament.
The Savanta institute, for its part, even increases the number of seats won by Keir Starmer’s Labor to 516, double the number obtained by Tony Blair during the Labor victory of 1997.
The Conservatives would then fall to just 53 seats, a crushing and unprecedented defeat for the party.
Major figures in the majority such as the Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt, the Minister of Defense Grant Shapps or the Minister for Relations with Parliament Penny Mordaunt would even lose their seats, according to these two polling institutes.
Behind them, the Liberal Democrats (centrists) could strengthen and become the third force in Parliament with 67 seats, according to YouGov. They would thus overtake the Scottish separatists of the SNP, in difficulty against Labor, who would only have 20 seats in Westminster.
The Reform UK party, which has been making progress since the surprise entry into the race of Brexit champion Nigel Farage in early June, would win its first five seats with 15% of the vote, including that of Clacton, in the east of England, where the party leader introduces himself, continues YouGov.
Savanta, conversely, believes that the party should not win any seats due to the one-round voting system in the constituencies, registering an eighth defeat in Nigel Farage’s tally.
Savanta notes, however, that more than a hundred seats have such narrow margins that it’s difficult to predict the July 4 score at this point. This is the case for that of Richmond, where Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is running.
