The last YouGov MRP poll before this week’s crunch vote has dramatically cut the predicted size of the Conservative Party‘s majority in the House of Commons. The forecast showed the Tory lead down to nine points from 11 points since a similar poll last month. The Tories are forecast to win 339 seats out of 650 in the general election – down from 359 in the last poll but up from 317 in the 2017 general election. This would still be the party’s best performance since 1987.
The Labour Party is forecast to lose 31 seats and end with a total of 231 – putting the party on course for its worst performance since 1983.
The Liberal Democrats would win 15 seats – three more than in 2017 – while the SNP would gain six for an overall total of 41.
If the election was held tomorrow, the poll forecasted the Tories would have a 43 percent share of the vote, followed by Labour (34 percent), Lib Dems (12 percent) and the Brexit Party (three percent).
YouGov Political Research Manager Chris Curtis said: “Our latest and final poll shows that a small Conservative majority is likely, with the Tories taking 22 more seats than in 2017 and Labour losing 31.
“This would be the best and worst results respectively for each party since the 80s.
Election poll: The Conservatives are forecast to secure a slim majority over Labour (Image: GETTY)
The Tories’ majority has fallen sharply from the last YouGov MRP poll (Image: REUTERS)
the margins are extremely tight and small swings in a small number of seats, perhaps from tactical voting and a continuation of Labour’s recent upward trend, means we can’t currently rule out a hung Parliament
“But the margins are extremely tight and small swings in a small number of seats, perhaps from tactical voting and a continuation of Labour’s recent upward trend, means we can’t currently rule out a hung parliament.
“As things currently stand there are 85 seats with a margin of error of five percent or less.”
For the last seven days, YouGov interviewed around 100,000 panellists about their voting intentions in Thursday’s general election.
The poll’s margin of error also means a hung Parliament is not impossible, meaning Mr Johnson has just 24 hours left of campaigning to secure victory on Thursday.
The MRP poll is much larger than YouGov’s usual polls, but the firm said the samples in each of the 632 Parliamentary constituencies are too small (on average, only 150 voters per constituency this week) to produce reliable estimates if we analysed the data as constituency polls.
The Prime Minister faces a crunch 24 hours (Image: GETTY)
Therefore in order to calculate the estimates for each constituency, YouGov used a technique called Multilevel Regression and Post-stratification (MRP).
The closely-watched forecast from YouGov is the last from the polling giant before Thursday’s general election.
The MRP (model takes the polling statistics from YouGov and projects them into seats.
This uses a large number of interviews to model people’s voting preferences based upon their demographics (age, gender, education, past vote and similar factors) and the local political circumstances (Do they live in a Conservative or Labour seat? Is it a pro-Brexit area? Is there an incumbent MP?).
The model is then applied to the demographic make-up and political circumstances of each of the 632 constituencies in the UK (excluding Northern Ireland), providing projected vote shares for every seat.
Boris Johnson stunned a crowd by barrelling through a polystyrene wall at the JCB factory in Uttoxeter (Image: GETTY)
Jeremy Corbyn has seen Labour close the gap on the Tories (Image: GETTY)
Despite reducing the majority, it is still forecast to be Labour’s worst election performance since 1983 (Image: GETTY)
It is considered to be the most detailed and accurate form of polling currently being deployed, and accurately projected the hung Parliament resulting from the 2017 general election and called 93 percent of the available seats correctly.
The previous YouGov MRP, published on November 27, predicted Mr Johnson’s Conservatives were on course to win by a majority of 68 seats in the House of Commons.
It found if the election were to be held the following day, the Tories would win 359 seats (42 more than they took in 2017) and 43 percent of the vote. In terms of seats won, this would have been the Conservatives’ best performance since 1987.
Labour was set to lose 51 seats – falling from 262 seats in 2017 to 211 now – and taking just 32 percent of the vote (a nine percentage point decrease). In terms of seats won this would be the party’s worst performance since 1983.
Jo Swinson’s Liberal Democrats are forecast to win 15 seats (Image: GETTY)
Throughout the general election campaign, the Tories have continued to hold a large lead over Labour in major polls, regularly by double digits.
Earlier today, Mr Johnson stunned a crowd by barrelling through a polystyrene wall at the JCB factory in Uttoxeter, Staffordshire with the words “gridlock” etched across it while aboard the heavy-duty vehicle.
In one of his last rallying cries before Thursday’s vote, he said: “On Thursday, I think it is time for the whole country symbolically to get in a cab of JCB, the custard colossus, and remove the current blockage that we have in a Parliamentary system.
“As Sajid Javid has just said, the choice could not be starker on Thursday.
The SNP are forecast to gain six seats from two years ago (Image: GETTY)
“Forty-eight hours from now our country can choose between going forward, punching through the current deadlock and achieving a brighter future together with a one nation Conservative government.
“Or we can remain stuck in neutral and paralysed with more deadlock, defeatism, division and drift under a coalition.
“It is the only mathematical alternative to a working majority government or a coalition led by Jeremy Corbyn propped up by Nicola Sturgeon.
“Frankly I think it will be an economic disaster for this country because they will whack up taxes for ordinary taxpayers £2,400 a head.
General election latest seat projection from the YouGov MRP poll (Image: YOUGOV)
“It will be £100,000 more for people earning as little as £20,000 a year.
“It will be an economic disaster in the sense that the cost of borrowing would go up.
“It would mean this country would be lead by a Hamas backing, IRA supporting, anti-semitism condoning appeaser of the Kremlin, that is what he is, just look at the record.”
But Mr Johnson, responding to a question from a journalist that he was “home and dry” for an election win, the Prime Minister insisted: “Absolutely not.”
He added: “This is a very close-fought election and we need every vote. “As I say, the only mathematical alternative to a working majority Conservative government is a real risk of another hung parliament.
“That’s another five years of confusion, chaos, dither, delay and division. We cannot go down that route.
“I’m sorry to say this but you remember what happened in 2017 – polls can be wrong. We need to be fighting for every vote.”
