The final Telegraph / Savanta ComRes poll of the 2019 General Election puts the Conservatives ahead of the Labour Party by 5 points, indicating potential for a Conservative majority or a hung parliament.
With respondents being shown the full selection of candidates that they will see in their polling booth on Thursday, the poll places the Conservatives on 41%, the Labour Party on 36%, up three points from the last Sunday Telegraph / Savanta ComRes poll, and the Liberal Democrats on 12% for the third poll in a row.
Despite the narrowing – this is the smallest Conservative lead in a Savanta ComRes poll since mid-October and the largest Labour vote share since January – according to voting analysis website Electoral Calculus, if the parties were to achieve these vote shares at a General Election, it would still result in the Conservatives having a slim majority of six.
However, we would say that these results indicate that this election is simply too close to call, with almost one in five (17%) who say they could possibly still change their mind and we could just as plausibly see a healthy Conservative majority as a hung parliament.
The broad picture in this poll, however, has not massively changed; the Conservatives are holding on to most 2016 Leave voters and around one in five Remainers, while Labour have about half the Remain vote and one in five Leave voters. The Lib Dems may improve on their 2017 performance – although they went into this election with more MPs than they won in 2017 due to defections – but not enough to break through significantly. They are also only attracting one in five Remain voters, which is almost the same proportion of Remainers sticking with the Conservatives and is down from one in four Remainers from the start of the campaign.
Interestingly more than one in five voters (22%) intending to vote Labour tomorrow, when asked which outcome they would like to see, did not select the option of “A Labour majority with Jeremy Corbyn as Prime Minister”, compared to just six percent of Conservative voters who did not select the corresponding option for Boris Johnson. This appears to suggest that a significant proportion of Labour voters do not fully support the result for which they would seemingly be voting for, although this could plausibly be down to at least some current Labour support coming from tactical voters.
Elsewhere in the poll, we also found that around one in six (17%) would consider leaving the country if Jeremy Corbyn becomes PM, and 13% would consider selling financial investments.
Commenting on the poll findings, Chris Hopkins, Head of Politics at Savanta ComRes said, “All that we know heading into polling day is that things are incredibly tight; not necessarily between the Conservatives and Labour in terms of vote share, but in terms of how that plays out in the 632 GB constituencies which they will be fighting. Small differences in vote share could have huge electoral impacts on which seats are won, lost and held come Friday morning and while the parties may remain publicly bullish about their chances, internally they can’t be predicting anything with a great deal of confidence.”
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