Polls predicting British PM May to lose majority
Print Edition
PRIME Minister Theresa May could lose control of parliament in Britain’s June 8 election, according to a projection by polling company YouGov, raising the prospect of political deadlock just as formal Brexit talks begin.
In stark contrast to opinion polls that have until the past week shown May on course for a big win in the snap election she called, the YouGov model suggested May would lose 20 seats and her 17-seat working majority in the 650-seat British parliament.
The YouGov constituency projection, based on 50,000 interviews over the course of a week, showed May would win 310 seats, down from the 331 seats won by her predecessor David Cameron in 2015.
The opposition Labour Party could win 257 seats, up from 232 seats in 2015, with smaller parties, including the Scottish National Party and Northern Irish parties, taking 83 seats
If the YouGov model turns out to be accurate, May would be well short of the 326 seats needed to form a government in June, when formal Brexit negotiations are due to begin.
May called the election in a bid to strengthen her hand in negotiations on Britain’s exit from the European Union, to win more time to deal with the impact of the divorce and to strengthen her grip on the Conservative Party. But if she does not handsomely beat the 12-seat majority Cameron won in 2015, her electoral gamble will have failed and her authority could be undermined just as she tries to deliver what she has told voters will be a successful Brexit.
If May fails to win an overall majority she would be forced to strike a deal with another party to continue governing either as a coalition or a minority government.
That would raise questions about the future of Brexit, the US$2.5 trillion economy and British policy on a range of issues including corporate taxation and government spending and borrowing.
When May called for an election on April 18, opinion polls suggested she could emulate Margaret Thatcher’s 1983 majority of 144 seats or even threaten Tony Blair’s 1997 Labour majority of 179 seats.
But polls had shown May’s rating slipping over the past month on the back of her policy to make elderly people pay a greater share of their care costs, a proposal dubbed the “dementia tax” by opponents.
Seven polls carried out since the May 22 Manchester suicide attack have shown May’s lead over the Labour Party narrowing.
When asked about the possibility of losing her majority, May said: “The only poll that matters is the one that is going to take place the 8th of June.”
Recent opinion polls have shown May’s lead has contracted to a range of 5 to 14 percentage points.
“Once the Conservative lead falls below 7 points we are potentially in the world of a hung parliament,” said John Curtice, a leading psephologist who is president of the British Polling Council. “Support for Labour among younger voters has gone up and gone up dramatically but then the crucial question is whether these young people will come out to vote.”
YouGov, use a technique called “Multilevel Regression and Post-stratification,” which takes a range of factors into consideration, such as: demographics, past elections and voter profiles to build a model which can come up with an estimate of how the vote will be split in individual constituencies.
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