Theresa May’s high hopes for a General Election victory could be scuppered by opinion polls showing giant lead for Conservatives, election bosses fear
PM’s campaign senior management team have been briefed on how national surveys could be as much as 15 points out for frontline constituency battles on the ground
OPINION polls that are showing giant Tory leads are a major threat to Theresa May’s victory hopes, her election bosses fear.
The PM’s campaign senior management team were briefed on how national surveys could be as much as 15 points out for frontline constituency battles on the ground.
Nationwide surveys cannot be relayed onto the 650 individual fights because of so many different local variables.
But they send a message to supporters that the June 8 result is beyond doubt for Mrs May, so they won’t bother to vote.
Mrs May’s campaign boss, election guru Sir Lynton Crosby, warned her team that Britain’s notoriously poor opinion polling industry are inaccurate by up to 6% historically – a worse rate than most Western countries.
The latest YouGov poll gave the Conservatives a stonking 24 point lead over Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour.
A Tory campaign source told The Sun: “We take no great comfort from our position in the published polls.
“Public polls measure national support for the parties, but the election will be decided in a handful of marginal seats.
“There is clear historical evidence that the reported Tory lead could actually be non-existent, and if the vote is distributed unfavourably we could easily lose our working majority.
“We only need to lose 6 seats and no one party would hold a majority.”
The YouGov poll put the Tories on 48% of voters’ support - the party’s highest rating in nine years since ex-Labour PM Gordon Brown’s darkest days in power.
Labour was on 24%, the Lib Dems 12% and UKIP 7%.
If the result was repeated universally in all 650 constituencies – which is highly unlikely - the figures would give the Conservatives a majority of 192, picking up 90 more seats.
Meanwhile, Labour would lose 89 MPs and be down to just 143.
The Tories’ predicament is the opposite to where the party was two years ago during the 2015 general election.
Then, dodgy opinion polls showed the race between David Cameron and Labour leader Ed Miliband was neck and neck, allowing the then PM to use them as a motivator for floating voters.
Tory MP Charlie Elphicke added: “There is no place for complacency, and we need to campaign for every single last vote
“Opinion polls are often misleading and can be completely wrong so everyone needs to get out to vote.”
