General election: Conservatives set for majority but race has tightened significantly - poll projection
Pollsters YouGov say their new projection - for Sky News - cannot rule out a possible hung parliament as an outcome.
Thursday 12 December 2019 14:27, UK
Boris Johnson is on course for a Commons majority of 28, according to a massive new poll projection for Sky News that suggests the race has tightened significantly in the last fortnight.
A new YouGov poll of 105,612 people for Sky News, taken over the last seven days and mapped across every seat in Britain, puts the Conservatives on course to win 339 seats, up 21 seats compared to the last general election in 2017.
Labour is down 31 to 231 seats, SNP up six to 41 seats, Liberal Democrats up three to 15 seats and Plaid Cymru and Greens unchanged on four seats and one seat, respectively.
YouGov says the results mean they cannot rule out a possible hung parliament as an outcome of Thursday's election, or alternatively a solid Tory majority.
The model has a margin of error, and its range of predictions for Tory seats lies between 311 and 367, meaning that this election could end in a hung parliament based on these results, with the Tories as the largest party.
The 28-seat Tory majority would represent an improvement in Labour's fortunes compared to the last YouGov "MRP" model released two weeks ago, which forecast a Conservative majority of 68 - more than double its current figure.
This puts Labour back ahead in seats like Weaver Vale, Workington, and outgoing Labour deputy leader Tom Watson's former seat of West Bromwich East.
The new model still shows the Tories winning Labour-held seats such as Don Valley, won in 2017 by Labour former minister Caroline Flint; and Wakefield, won in 2017 by Mary Creagh - a one-time Labour leadership candidate.
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Most of the seats changing hands are the ones Labour won in 2017, passing back to Tory control.
Labour's recovery in seats it is defending with a majority of 8,000 or less, the YouGov/Sky News poll projects, shows that the recovery has been strongest in Remain areas with those constituencies increasing vote share by an average 6%.
Meanwhile marginal Labour seats which voted heavily to leave the EU by 60% or more have seen Labour increase their vote share by just 2%.
The change in the result in the last fortnight has come from a small rise in the Labour share of the vote and small decrease the Lib Dem share of the vote.
There is an improvement in Labour's fortunes in the West Midlands, where they have narrowed the Tory lead from 17 points to 13 points.
The YouGov/Sky News projection is based on the Tories getting 42.6% of the vote, down from 43.4% in the 2017 general election, Labour on 33.8%, down from 41% in 2017, and the Lib Dems on 13.6%, up from 7.6% in 2017, with the Brexit Party on 3.1%.
An MRP, or "multi-level regression and post-stratification", model looks at the voting patterns for more than 100 different characteristics, and then matches them to demographic and census data in seats.
It does not cover Northern Ireland.
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- Watch John Bercow with Dermot Murnaghan live from 9pm on Thursday
- Follow the Election Social show hosted by Lewis Goodall and BuzzFeed UK's Emily Ashton on Sky News' website, app and social media channels from 9.45pm
- See the exit poll live at 10pm
- Watch KayBurley@Breakfast election special on Friday morning