Sunak poll bump 'too little, too late' on road to oblivion

Rishi Sunak is on the verge of leading the Conservative Party to the worst defeat in its 346-year history, according to a new poll for The Independent.

- DAVID MADDOX & ALICJA HAGOPIAN

The Techne UK survey of 5,503 voters has given Labour a 19point lead at 40 per cent – almost twice the Tories’ 21 per cent – with just one day of campaigning left to go. While the Conservatives have gained two points from late last week, and Labour dropped one with Reform UK also losing a point to 16 per cent, the narrowing of the polls appears to be too little, too late for Mr Sunak after a disastrous campaign.

It comes as Rishi Sunak started a 48-hour tour in the battle bus on the campaign trail by stacking shelves at Morrisons, delivering a message that only 130,000 voters were needed to stop a Labour “supermajority”. However, according to Techne, he will only be able to rely on four in 10 Tory voters who supported Boris Johnson in the 2019 election, representing a collapse in support for the party.

While Nigel Farage’s Reform has gone slightly backwards in this poll, the data reveals that the party has taken a quarter (25 per cent) of the previous election’s Tory vote, almost four times as many as Conservative supporters who switched to Labour (7 per cent).

If this is how the election pans out, the Tories would be only the third largest party on 66 seats, behind the Lib Dems on 70, while Labour would have a majority of 284, according to Electoral Calculus. Reform would get a foothold in parliament with six seats.

Techne chief executive Michela Morizzo warned that the poll contraction in favour of the Tories is “too little, too late”.