Mega-poll suggests worst ever Tory result

Another day brings another devastating poll for the Tories. The first MRP polling of the election campaign is out and it makes for grim reading for Rishi Sunak. A 10,000-strong survey by Electoral Calculus for the Daily Mail suggests that the Conservative party could receive just 66 seats – its worst result in history – with Labour on course for a staggering majority of 302. This takes into account tactical voting and is based on a poll which shows Keir Starmer’s party on 46 per cent – more than twice the level of Rishi Sunak’s Tories on 19 per cent.

An individual constituency breakdown suggests that 18 cabinet ministers would lose their seats. Among them include Kemi Badenoch, James Cleverly, Grant Shapps and Penny Mordaunt, all of whose seats would be taken by Labour. The Lib Dems would seize Mid Dorset and North Poole off Michael Tomlinson; Simon Hart in Wales would lose to Plaid Cymru. Even Alister Jack, who is standing down, would see his Dumfries and Galloway seat go to the SNP.  The Tories would, just, be the official Opposition, but would boast less than half of the opposition MPs.

Now, if this result seems too extraordinary to be true – it probably is. This poll combines a bullish methodology on tactical voting and a proportional swing with a 27 point Labour lead, which is at the higher end of the current range. Rival pollsters are already arguing that these findings need to be taken with a hefty dose of salt. Given the state of the Scottish nationalists, for instance, it seems highly improbable that they will be making any gains at this election.

One pollster explains his skepticism thus: ‘10,000 is a pretty small sample for MRP, tactical voting modelling is tricky at best of times and often partisan and you’re basing it on national voting intention.’ In short, a lot of it comes down to whether you think that Labour are 27 points ahead of the Tories right now and that Reform is on 12 per cent of the vote. Most pollsters do not

The difficulty of an MRP poll is judging how a uniform swing would work when one party is twenty points ahead in the polls. Conservative MPs are tonight hoping that the swing in their seat will either be less pronounced due to regional differences or thanks to their own individual record being be rewarded by grateful voters. After a reasonably successful few days in this campaign, the Tory party now faces a weekend dominated by negative headlines about impending armageddon.

In the coming week we can expect both YouGov and More in Common to do their own MRPs, both of which ought to show a better result for the Tories than the catastrophic predictions in tonight’s Electoral Calculus survey.