Labour’s lead over the Conservative Party has dropped

Labour’s lead over the Conservative Party has dropped to 11pts, according to the latest poll from Savanta.

The poll, conducted over the weekend (3-5 March), shows Labour on 43% of the vote and the Conservatives on 32%, the former down one point from the previous week, and the latter up three points.

The poll presents the smallest Labour lead shown from any pollsters since the beginning of December 2022, when Savanta also showed an 11pt lead.

Prior to removing undecided voters from the sample to give the headline VI, this poll shows that two thirds (66%) of Conservative 2019 voters say they would vote Conservative if an election were tomorrow, while just 12% would vote Labour. Just 11% say they’re undecided.

This contrasts a Savanta poll in late January which showed a headline 21pt Labour lead – the largest Labour lead Savanta have recorded since Sunak became Prime Minister – and where just 52% of Conservative 2019 voters would still vote Conservative, 17% would vote Labour and 18% were undecided.

Commenting on the findings, Chris Hopkins, Political Research Director at Savanta said, “We must acknowledge that this poll is an outlier compared to others in the industry, which are not seeing the same movement from Conservative 2019 voters back to Sunak’s party, having previously been much more likely to be undecided or directly switching to Labour.”

“Of course the last fortnight has seen more favourable headlines for Rishi Sunak, and there is a sense that things are moving in the right direction for the Conservative Party, with today’s economic news perhaps a sign of further good fortune. It’ll be interesting to monitor polling averages over the next few weeks, in addition to how the Budget is received on Wednesday, to see if this poll was ahead of its time or a true outlier.”