Polls predict a crushing electoral defeat for the British Conservatives and an easy victory for the Labor Party

Three opinion polls on Wednesday predicted an unprecedented crushing defeat for the Conservative Party led by British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in the July 4 elections, while they expected the opposition Labor Party to win with a large and easy majority.

A YouGov poll showed that the Labor Party, led by Keir Starmer, is on its way to capturing 425 seats in the 650-seat British House of Commons, the largest number in its history. The Savanta poll expected the Labor Party to win 516 seats, while the More in Common poll expected it to win 406 seats.

The Savanta poll predicted that the Conservatives would win 53 seats, and the Liberal Democrats 50. The YouGov poll predicted that the Conservatives would win 108 seats and the Liberal Democrats 67 seats. The More in Common poll expected the Conservatives to get 155 and the Liberal Democrats to get 49. The three polls followed an approach that uses age, gender, education and other variables to predict the results in each British voting area. Pollsters used this approach in their successful prediction of the outcome of the 2017 British election.

The polls are very consistent with previous ones predicting a victory for the Labor Party, which remained in the opposition during 14 years of Conservative rule, but they highlight that the extent of the Conservatives’ defeat may be worse than previously thought. YouGov expected the Conservatives to win only 108 seats, approximately 32 seats less than a similar poll conducted two weeks ago, while the Savanta and YouGov polls expected the party of Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher to obtain the smallest number of seats in its nearly 200-year history of competing in elections.

The Savanta poll published by the Telegraph newspaper said that Sunak may also lose his parliamentary seat in northern England, which was once considered a guaranteed Conservative constituency, with the results there currently close. The three polls also predicted that a number of prominent government ministers would lose their seats, including Finance Minister Jeremy Hunt.

Polls did not expect the right-wing Reform Party, led by Nigel Farage, to win many seats. The YouGov poll expected the party to win five seats, while the Savanta poll expected it to win nothing. The More in Common poll did not provide figures for the Reform Party.

Most opinion polls currently indicate that Starmer's Labor Party is about 20 percentage points ahead of the ruling Conservative Party in vote share. Other opinion polls in the past few days have painted a bleak picture of Sunak, with one predicting “electoral extinction” for the Conservatives.