UK General Election polls: Theresa May could lose seats in General Election and UK may face hung parliament, poll suggests

Complex analysis by YouGov has Tories losing 20 seats and Labour gaining 28
On the campaign trail: Theresa May at an event in Twickenham
REUTERS
Hatty Collier31 May 2017
WEST END FINAL

Get our award-winning daily news email featuring exclusive stories, opinion and expert analysis

I would like to be emailed about offers, event and updates from Evening Standard. Read our privacy notice.

Theresa May could be on course to lose seats in the General Election and the UK faces a hung parliament, according to a shock new poll.

The seat-by-seat projection for The Times by YouGov predicts that the Conservative Party could lose 20 seats and see its majority wiped out, while Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour may gain 28 seats.

The controversial analysis, released late on Tuesday, is based on a complex model and suggests Mrs May's gamble of calling a snap election in the hope of a landslide win could backfire spectacularly.

YouGov's analysis puts the Tories on 310 seats, down from the 330 they went into the election with, and 16 short of a majority.

Labour would get 257 seats, up from 229, the Liberal Democrats 10, up from the nine Tim Farron's party held when the election was called, the SNP 50, the Greens one and Plaid Cymru three.

The results of the new poll come after the Labour leader was hailed for a down to earth interview on The One Show on Tuesday evening.

Mr Corbyn appeared to recover from a blundering interview on BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour in the morning in which he repeatedly failed to answer the cost of his flagship childcare pledge.

Mrs May had launched a scathing attack on Mr Corbyn during a speech after his radio blunder in which she said he would be "naked and alone" in the Brexit negotiating chamber.

The YouGov figures are from the polling model’s central estimate, which acknowledges a large range of variation but it predicts that even a good night for the Conservatives would give them only 15 more seats than Mrs May now has and well short of the majority she would have hoped to secure.

A bad night could see the Conservatives plummet to 274 seats.

YouGov's model draws on the data collected from around 50,000 panellists quizzed on their voting intention over the course of a week and uses a recently-developed technique called multilevel regression and post-stratification (MRP).

The pollster's MRP model is based on the fact that people with similar characteristics tend to vote similarly, but not identically, regardless of where they live.

During the EU referendum campaign it consistently showed that more voters favoured Leave than Remain.

But YouGov acknowledged that models could not produce estimates as accurate as a full-scale poll in each constituency.

YouGov chief executive Stephan Shakespeare said the data could change dramatically between now and June 8.

"The data suggests that there is churn on all fronts, with the Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats both likely to both lose and gain seats," he wrote in The Times.

"Based on the model's current estimates, some seats are likely to change hands along EU referendum dividing lines.

"This is just a snapshot based on data from the past seven days and people can and do change their minds in the closing days of a general election campaign.

"Furthermore, it would not take a slight fall in Labour's share and a slight increase in the Conservatives' to see Theresa May returning to No 10 with a healthy majority."

The latest polls by ICM and Survation both suggest the Conservatives are still way ahead.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in