The Conservatives are facing a historic defeat at the election after a bombshell new poll suggested the party could be left with just 53 MPs – and Rishi Sunak would not be among them.
Adding further misery to a raft of dire poll results for Mr Sunak, it also shows him on course to become the first sitting prime minister to lose his seat.
And the Tories could be left battling the Lib Dems to avoid third place, with Sir Ed Davey’s party set to gain 50 MPs.
The Savanta and Electoral Calculus polling analysis puts Labour on track to take 516 seats, with an estimated majority of 382 – twice the size of Tony Blair’s 1997 landslide – suggesting that recent Tory warnings of a Labour “supermajority” are correct.
While Nigel Farage’s party Reform UK was not predicted to win any seats, a separate megapoll by YouGov added to Mr Sunak’s mounting woes, suggesting that the successor to the Brexit Party would return five MPs to Westminster.
They include Mr Farage, who would finally become an MP at his eighth attempt.
His party would also beat Tory chair Richard Holden, who has faced accusations that his candidacy in the “safe” seat of Basildon and Billericay was a “stitch-up”.
The Tories are also on course to be wiped out in the North East, and to secure just three seats in the North West.
An astonishing 14 ministers who attend cabinet are set to lose their seats, including Jeremy Hunt, Penny Mordaunt, Mel Stride, Alex Chalk and Mark Harper.
Humiliatingly, the party would also lose constituencies formerly held by previous prime ministers including John Major, Theresa May, Ted Heath, Boris Johnson and David Cameron.
The poll results were published hours after a cabinet minister warned that the Tories will “get it in the neck” at the election.
Welsh secretary David TC Davies said in an interview with The Sun that his party “can’t hide” from polls that are “clearly pointing at a large Labour majority”.
Chris Hopkins, political research director at Savanta, said the “stark” figures are a consequence of “the almost unique set of events conspiring against the Conservative Party this election”.
These include Mr Sunak’s D-Day gaffe, when he left the commemorations early to record a TV interview, and the rise of Reform UK. But they also include some longer-term challenges, including the mini-Budget and Partygate, said Mr Hopkins.
He added: “We’ve been conditioned for so long to believe the Conservative Party, as the natural party of government, will always be a major political force. But our MRP [multilevel regression with post-stratification] projections – in partnership with Electoral Calculus – suggest that they will be fighting with the Liberal Democrats to be the official opposition, with Labour on for a historic majority.”
He said that his polling firm currently lists nearly 200 seats as being “too close to call, meaning just small changes could have a huge impact on the outcome of this election”.
YouGov said its tally “has the Conservatives on their lowest seat tally in the party’s almost 200-year history”.
Polling expert Professor Sir John Curtice told The Independent that the party appeared to be on course for its biggest defeat in more than a century.
He said: “Whether it’s going to be 53, or 108, or whatever, it is all pointing to a low figure. And if the Labour lead remains anything like it is, and Reform remain as high as they are, the Tories getting to the 156 [seats] of 1906 [an election that saw the Conservative Party defeated heavily in a Liberal landslide] is beginning to look more and more remote.”
YouGov has predicted that Labour is on course to achieve a 200-seat majority. Its analysis suggests that Labour is likely to take 425 seats, with the Tories taking 108, the Liberal Democrats 67, SNP 20, Reform UK five, Plaid Cymru four, and the Green Party two.
Earlier, another megapoll, carried out for More in Common UK, found the Conservatives on course for their worst defeat in more than a century, with high-profile names including Jeremy Hunt set to lose their seats.
Luke Tryl, executive director of More in Common UK, which carried out the research, said the findings showed that the Tories were in a “deep hole” and that the problem was getting worse. The poll, of more than 10,000 people, suggests the Conservatives would hold on to just 155 seats, their worst total since 1906.
The polls all used a technique known as multilevel regression with post-stratification, to model results at a constituency level.
