Polling guru factors out two massive flaws in Rishi Sunak’s hung Parliament optimism

Rishi Sunak’s claim that the UK might be heading for a hung Parliament is unlikely to be true, leading pollsters have warned.

The Prime Minister, whose party took a huge battering in last week’s local elections, has claimed the race for No10 is “closer” than many polls suggest. He pointed to analysis suggesting that Labour may not secure an overall majority.

But the UK’s top polling guru, Pofessor Sir John Curtice, has poured water on the PM’s optimism. He said Mr Sunak would be wrong to place his hopes on a hung Parliament based on data from last week’s voting.

And Ben Page, chief executive of polling company Ipsos, also said Mr Sunak’s projection was “for the birds”. It comes after Mr Sunak said on Monday: “The independent analysis shows that whilst of course this was a disappointing weekend for us, that the result of the next general election isn’t a foregone conclusion, and indeed actually is closer than, or the situation is closer than many people are saying or indeed some of the opinion polls are predicting.”

Sir John said Sky News analysis, which concluded Labour isn’t on course to win a majority based on vote share, doesn’t take two major things into account. One is that around one in five people vote differently in local elections compared to nationals. And the other, he said, is that Labour wins in Scotland – where no elections were held last week – could cement Keir Starmer’s path to victory.

He wrote for the BBC: “Nowadays the Liberal Democrats consistently outperform their national standing in the local ballot boxes. The same has also come to be true of the Greens, while independent candidates have also enjoyed some notable success in recent years. Labour, in contrast, often do less well in local elections.”

And he continued: “Meanwhile, the party political battle in Scotland is now very different from that in England – and the outcome of the current battle north of the border between Labour and the SNP could be crucial to the result of the next election. English local elections do not tell us much about what will happen north of the border.”

Meanwhile, Mr Page, addressing the possibility of a hung Parliament, told Times Radio: “I think it’s for the birds, to be honest at the moment. If you look at the swing in Blackpool South, 30% or so, you look at these local election results – we haven’t seen anything of this kind since just before Labour won a landslide in 1997.“

Speaking at an event in central London, Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves said: “No votes have been cast in the next general election and we are fighting for every single vote. But the results last week, not just the percentage shares or the number of councils won or the number of mayors won – including in the Prime Minister’s own backyard of York and North Yorkshire – but the places that we were winning are the places that we need to win to form the next government.”

She added: “I don’t think the results last week point to a hung parliament.”