A brutal new poll has suggested even PM Rishi Sunak would lose his seat if there was a general election right now as the public move away from the Tories.
The poll, released by Find Out Now and Electoral Calculus, asked 11,000 people who they would vote for if they had to go to the ballot box immediately.
It showed 24% of voters would still back the Conservatives, compared to a whopping 46% who would vote for Labour.
That’s a 21% decrease in the vote share for the Tories, and a 13% increase for the opposition.
It also works out to a whopping landslide for Keir Starmer’s party – Labour would take home 461 seats ( up 258 on the 2019 election).
That would mean a landslide larger than Tony Blair’s back in 1997, where he secured 328 seats.
And, after 13 years in power, the poll predicted the Tories would have just 90 seats (working out to a loss of 258).
The Scottish National Party (SNP) would secure 38, a decline of 10 MPs in the Commons, while the Liberal Democrats would still be trailing with just 37 seats, although that’s still an increase of 26 on the last time the public went to the ballot box.
The prime minister would also lose his place in the Commons if this early prediction were true, along with 17 members of his cabinet.
Sunak currently has a majority of 27,210 in his constituency of Richmond, Yorkshire.
The poll was conducted between July 31 and August 4, exclusively for Channel 4.
That means those surveyed shared their hypothetical vote after July’s three by-elections where the Conservatives had only one victory – Uxbridge and South Ruislip in London.
It’s thought their candidate won narrowly because of a backlash against Labour’s extended Ulez (ultra lower emission zone) scheme in London.
The poll also surveyed the public after Sunak doubled down on his less eco-friendly policies, and confirmed 100 licences for fossil fuel drilling in the North Sea.
This poll was conducted a long way off from the next general election, which is not expected until December 2024 – but it will undoubtedly concern the Tories.
Voters have previously criticised Sunak for being “very unrelatable” and for his personal wealth, with focus groups telling More in Common group that “he’s not even in a position to understand, is he?”
And only last week, one of Sunak’s own Tory ministers, Maria Caulfield, accidentally said “when” not “if” Labour win the next election during a live TV interview.