Tory support at its highest since May 2008
The Conservatives have surged to their highest polling lead since May 2008 in the first full poll completed since Theresa May announced the general election.
On headline voting intention, 48 per cent of respondents said they would back the Conservatives if an election were held tomorrow, an increase of four percentage points. Just 24 per cent expressed said they would vote Labour.
According to Electoral Calculus, this would give the Conservatives a majority of up to 190 — even larger than Labour’s 1997 landslide.
Theresa May also hit her highest ever personal approval rating in the YouGov/Times poll, with 54 saying she would make the best prime minister. Just 15 per cent said the same of Jeremy Corbyn, while 31 per cent don’t know.
Unsurprisingly, the majority of the public (63 per cent) now expect a Conservative majority. Four per cent overall predict a Labour majority, including just 12 per cent of Labour’s own voters.
See: Campaign gets off to a slow start with stilted PMQs – but Corbyn’s attacks on May hit home
13 Responses to “First general election poll promises vast Conservative majority”
Carl
You have hit the nail on the head Fred. The dissonance between metropolitan, remain voting, globally connected Labour and traditional working class, leave voting, grounded in a particular place Labour may be an insurmountable gap. I draw on both positions as a university teacher from a working class background. Some of the identity politics of recent decades has acted as rejection of a set of traditional positions that UKIP has infiltrated.
It is possible to move forward but the ludicrous egos of most of the parliamentary party and the revivalist fervour of the Corbynistas are roadblocks. We should of organised a grand centre-left coalition of Lib Dem/Green/Labour/ PC/SNP/SDLP/Alliance with the core pledge of both the introduction of PR and the offer of a clear vote at the end of Brexit negotiations. – 30 month time frame – new election. Instead we run the risk of me never getting a Labour Govt again in my lifetime. PR was always the only way to save us from one party hegemony.
Margaret
How wrong you are! I don’t know where you’ve got your information from, but you obviously don’t get out much, or maybe you live in a selectively isolated wealthy area.
Whatever your location, perhaps you haven’t had to face the reality of broken Britain where working adults are dependent on food banks, parents skipping meals to feed their children, 100 elderly people in our local hospital have no care package in place to allow them to return home – there are no places in the few remaining nursing homes to free up hospital beds, workers have had their hours cut by one third and many aren’t guaranteed any hours…how do they keep a roof over their heads, pay bills, eat and be available to work every day.
If none of these issues are apparent to you, then you are one very lucky person, and Theresa May probably works in your favour.
For the majority of hard working people, the elderly, the children, the sick and disabled, she has let us all down big time!
The sooner she is gone the better for the desperately underfunded NHS, for the messed up education system which is in crisis, not to mention the Tory election fraud investigations, wealthy tax breaks, corporation tax dodgers, post office shares handed on a plate to the Tory party sponsors of 2015 general election.
How much more evidence do we need of a failing government, that targets the poorest most vulnerable in society, to line the pockets of the seriously wealthy.
We need change and we need it now, before more lives are lost to malnutrition and suicide on an even larger scale.
ted francis
Oh Freddie, how can you rejoice in the prospect of any Government governing totally unopposed?
An educated guess tells me you are an ardent Leave the EU loop de looper who believes that the Neanderthal Trump is a great President.
Susan Fewster
http://metro.co.uk/2017/04/20/surge-in-bets-for-jeremy-corbyn-to-be-the-next-prime-minister-6585824/
Seems the situation may have changed 🙂
Fred
Margaret, all that may well be true, but it doesn’t win elections.
If a party scares off middle-of-the-road voters then it cannot win. This has been known for decades. It’s simple maths. Blair understood this, this is why he won in 1997 because he presented a Labour party that was palatable to people in the middle.
The last time a party won a general election in the UK with a manifesto to the Left of Blair was 1974.
Think about that.