The Conservatives have hit their lowest vote share yet in a weekly tracker poll after voters apparently turned away from the party when Rishi Sunak called a snap election.
According to Techne UK, the Tories now have the support of just 19 per cent of voters – the first time the weekly tracker has had the party below 20 points.
It puts them 26 points behind Labour, whose leader Sir Keir Starmer has hailed the 4 July election as a chance to “turn the page”.
Sir Keir accused the prime minister of never having believed the Rwanda deportation plan would work after Mr Sunak conceded that flights would not take off before the election.
As the party leaders began their campaigns, Mr Sunak urged voters to back him over the government’s flagship immigration scheme.
He admitted planes carrying asylum seekers to Kigali would take off after polling day, but vowed the preparation had already happened.
Despite speculation about a Tory rebel effort to oust Mr Sunak and call off the election, one prominent critic said it was too late to get rid of the prime minister.
’Bleak’ outlook for Tories as they hit new poll low after Sunak calls snap election
The Tories have hit their lowest vote share yet in a weekly tracker poll after voters apparently turned away from the party after Rishi Sunak called a snap election.
According to Techne UK, the Tories are now stuck on 19 per cent, the first time the company’s weekly tracker has had them below 20 points. It puts them 26 points behind Labour.
Techne’s chief executive has warned of “a bleak result” for the Conservatives unless they can change the narrative in the next six weeks:
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I had been set to launch bid to run as MP, says Farage
Nigel Farage has claimed he was preparing to launch a campaign next week to stand as an MP before the prime minister announced the general election date.
Appearing on GB News as a guest during his typical show slot on Thursday, he said: “I have always said that there will be a moment when I throw my hat in the ring fully into British politics. I’ve also said aged 60, I’ve got one more card to play and it’s about when I play it.
“I had, to be honest with you, put in place some preparations to launch next week.
“I wonder whether the Conservative Party found out about it. I think the sense of panic that we saw yesterday, the badly prepared speech, might perhaps have prompted it a little bit.”
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Experts say Tory election victory would be ‘biggest turnaround in history’
Leading pollsters Professor Sir John Curtice and Lord Robert Hayward have said that a party has never before come from so far behind in the polls to win a general election:
