AN opinion poll is predicting that the Conservatives will lose all of their seats in South Gloucestershire, North Somerset and B&NES at next month’s general election.
The first major YouGov poll ahead of the election, published last night, suggests Labour is on course for a landslide victory and a 194-seat majority, even bigger than Tony Blair’s in 1997.
It predicts that Labour will win the Filton & Bradley Stoke seat currently held by Jack Lopresti, the new Bristol North East seat and the North East Somerset & Hanham constituency, where former Brexit Opportunities minister Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg is being challenged by Labour’s Dan Norris, the West of England Metro Mayor.
Lib Dems predicted to win Thornbury & Yate
Liberal Democrat Claire Young, currently the leader of South Gloucestershire Council, is predicted to unseat Tory skills minister Luke Hall in Thornbury & Yate.
But the poll also predicts a defeat for Labour in the new Bristol Central seat, which replaces Bristol West and where Labour shadow culture secretary Thangam Debbonaire is facing a strong challenge from the Greens’ national party co-leader Carla Denyer.
Labour is predicted to hold its other Bristol seats – Bristol East, North West and South – and could even win the two Conservative-held seats in North Somerset, according to YouGov.
Poll based on 60,000 voters’ intentions
The YouGov poll is based on the voting intentions of nearly 60,000 voters – around 90 per constituency across the country.
It uses a technique known as MRP (Multi-level Regression and Poststratification), which is regarded as one of the most accurate forms of election forecasting as it uses a large sample of voters and census data to model the likely levels of support from multiple population groups in each constituency.
The poll predicts Labour would have 422 MPs, with the Conservatives reduced to 140 and the Lib Dems up to 48 if an election were held today and votes cast reflected intentions in the poll.
Metro Mayor and Rees-Mogg rematch
It is predicting very close results in a number of seats: the North East Somerset & Hanham constituency where Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg is facing a rematch with Dan Norris, 14 years after he beat the former Labour MP in the predecessor North East Somerset seat, is “leaning” towards Labour in the poll.
The pollsters class Thornbury & Yate as a “lean” towards the Lib Dems from the Tories, while Labour’s Filton & Bradley Stoke candidate Claire Hazelgrove has a more comfortable predicted lead over Conservative incumbent Jack Lopresti – the pollsters say she is “likely” to win.
They also say North Somerset, which along with predecessor seat Woodspring has been held by the Tories since 1950, is “leaning” towards Labour. Former Emersons Green town councillor Sadik Al-Hassan is standing for Labour against Liam Fox, who has been an MP since 1992.
YouGov also have Weston-super-Mare, which has been Conservative since 2005, “leaning” towards Labour.
Across the whole of the South West, Labour would become the biggest party with 24 seats, up from seven, the Conservatives would drop from 52 to 20 and the Lib Dems would be on 14.
Details of the polling predictions for every constituency can be found here.
By Adam Postans, Local Democracy Reporting Service