Labour would lose its majority and there would be a hung parliament if a general election was held again today, according to a mega-poll.
Seat-by-seat analysis from the think tank More in Common for The Sunday Times found Keir Starmer would lose almost 200 seats of the 411 he won just six months ago in his landslide victory.
The data, collected from 11,024 adults in Britain, found 87 of Labour’s seats would go to the Conservatives, 67 to Reform UK – including many of the so-called red wall seats in the Midlands and Northern England – and 26 to the SNP.
Starmer would end up with just six MPs more than the Tories in total, with 228 seats to the Conservatives’ 222.
The UK would then have a hung parliament, because a party needs to hold at least 326 seats out of the 650 available in the Commons to command a majority and form a government.
Six cabinet ministers – Angela Rayner, Yvette Cooper, John Healey, Ed Miliband, Bridget Phillipson and Jonathan Reynolds – would even lose their places in parliament to Reform candidates, while Wes Streeting would lose his to an independent, according to the mega poll.
The model also showed many seats were too close to call, with multiple parties securing the same level of support in the same constituencies.
The national vote share would been much closer than it is right now, with Labour taking 25%, the Tories 26% and Reform 21%.
The Lib Dems would secure 14% of the overall vote while the Greens would take 8% and the SNP 2%.
This update will no doubt bolster Reform, who recently claimed to have surpassed the Tories in terms of membership numbers and who hope to overtake them at the May local elections.
The MRP poll comes after Labour secured a wide but shallow victory in July. This was technically a landslide win, because of the way the First Past The Post system works, even though the party did not win much of the national vote (34%).
Starmer’s government has also been hit with a wave of backlash over unpopular policy decisions – such as increasing national insurance tax for employers and reducing the winter fuel payments – as well as more personal scandals, such as the number of freebies the PM received from party donors, the sacking of his chief of staff Sue Gray and then the messy resignation of his transport secretary Louise Haigh.
Sky News analysis also found Labour is facing its worst end to the year in opinion polls since World War 2, averaging just 26.6%, while pollsters at Ipsos found Starmer himself faces a net satisfaction score of -34.
Executive director of More in Common UK, Luke Tryl, said: “With potentially four and a half years to go, this model is not a prediction of what would happen at the next General Election.
“Instead, however, it confirms the fragmentation of British politics that we saw in July’s election has only accelerated in Labour’s six months in office.”
He said the First Past the Post system struggles “with that degree of fragmentation,” which is why some seats are on a “three-way knife edge”.
Tryl continued: “There is no doubt that many voters have found the start of the Starmer government disappointing and Labour’s estimated vote share would drop significantly were there to be an election tomorrow.
“Far from the usual electoral honeymoon, our model estimates that Labour would lose nearly 200 of the seats they won in July’s election.
“While the new government is still in its infancy it is clear that decisions such as means testing the winter fuel allowance and other budget measures have landed badly. The pressure from the public is now on the government to deliver.”