All polls now have CON leads: LAB’s brief moment in the Sun is over
But these numbers could mean PM Starmer
As conference season begins there’s a new Opinium poll out that has CON back in the lead. This follows the trend of other pollsters that are reporting a little bit of a recovery by the Tories.
Johnson’s problem is that at GE2019 his party had an 11.8% GB vote lead over LAB. Theoretically, any gap smaller than that should lead to CON losses so the latest 3% lead with Opinium indicates a 4.4% CON to LAB swing which could cost quite a number of seats.
With expected seat losses to the SNP in Scotland and the LDs doing well in Remain-voting seats like C&A the next election could be tight. My calculation is that BoJo needs to keep seat losses to below 47 to be certain.
Of course the final date for the election could be more than three years away and Johnson is giving himself the right to decide when the election shall be without the constraints of the Fixed Term Parliament Act.
The good thing for me about that LAB poll lead was that my betting tip came good. I’d said that the chances of late 2021 poll lead was probably worth a punt and so it proved.