Labour puts its faith in opinion polls and spread of votes across the country

On the day Rishi Sunak called a general election for 4 July, the Conservatives were trailing Labour by nearly 22 points in the polls.

- Eleni Courea

For many in Sunak's party, going to the country in these circumstances seems like madness. But Tory strategists have concluded their position - which has been the same for more than a year-is unlikely to improve in the next six months.

Instead, Sunak will be hoping that polls narrow during the six-week election campaign as he takes the fight to Labour.

The polls have been wrong several times before - notably in 2015 when the Conservatives under David Cameron unexpectedly won a majority, dashing Ed Miliband's hopes of becoming prime minister. In the run-up, most pollsters had suggested that the two main parties were neck and neck.

But unlike under Miliband, Starmer's Labour has maintained a hefty double-digit poll lead for nearly two years.

"There are different ways you can look at this - the historical precedent, the polling trends and the concrete stuff like the recent local elections," said Joe Twyman, founder of Deltapoll. "All of them say the same story - and that's that the Conservatives are in a lot of trouble."