More in Common projects Labour will gain a majority of over 200 seats on 4 July

Luke Tryl, Executive Director of More in Common UK, said:

"With hours to go before polls opening, our latest MRP suggests the Conservative Party are heading for the worst result in their history, while Labour look set to achieve a record breaking majority of their own.

But it would be a mistake to assume that tomorrow doesn’t matter. With over a hundred seats still in the balance, the size of Labour’s victory, the extent to which the Conservatives are able to form a viable opposition, as well as the challenge they face from the Liberal Democrats, along with how many Green and Reform UK MPs join the House of Commons will all be determined by where those still undecided voters ultimately cast their ballot."

Key findings

• Labour projected to have a majority of 210, gaining over 200 seats across England, Scotland and Wales
• Conservatives face worst result ever - losing 239 seats
• Liberal Democrats to recover to pre-Coalition levels, returning more than 50 MPs to Parliament
• Nigel Farage, Lee Anderson set to be elected as Reform UK MPs in Parliament
• Jeremy Corbyn set to win Islington North
• SNP collapse in Scotland with Labour taking twice as many seats as the SNP

The model is based on voting intention data collected between 24th June 2024 and 1st July 2024 from 13,556 adults in Great Britain.

Labour set to gain more than 200 seats

Based on this model, Labour would receive 40% of the total vote share and 66% of the 650 Parliamentary constituencies in the UK, while the Conservatives would win 19% of seats with 24% of the vote.  The Liberal Democrats are set to reach a total of 52 seats, while the SNP are set to be reduced to 16 seats in Scotland.

The model projects that Labour will return to the Commons with 430 MPs and a majority of 210 - more seats than they won in 1997 - including a major recovery in Scotland, across the Red Wall and in seats right across the country.

In 500 simulations of the election, Labour win a majority of between 188 and 230 seats.

114 seats have a majority of less than 5%, and 52 seats are too close to call

Overall, there are 113 seats with a majority less than 5%, where a last minute swing could change the results.There are 52 seats in a statistical tie with the projected winner less than 2 percentage points ahead of their closest rival - these seats are too close to call. These include seven seats where members of the cabinet, including potential Leadership contender Penny Mordaunt, are defending their seats. It also Bristol Central where Shadow Culture Secretary Thangam Debbonaire faces a tight battle against Greens’ co-leader Carla Denyer.

The model also finds 99 marginal Conservative seats where control of the seat is decided by less than 5 percentage points. If the Tories were to win all of these marginal seats, the seat totals would sit at 177 for the Conservatives, 393 for Labour and 41 for the Liberal Democrats. In the worst case scenario, the Conservatives could be left with as few as 78 seats.

Conservatives facing their worst ever result

The MRP projects the worst ever loss for the Conservatives (though falls short of the worst ever election result, returned by Labour in 1931).

While the Prime Minister looks set to retain his Richmond and Northallerton seat, eight members of the Cabinet (either secretaries of state or ministers attending cabinet) standing for re-election on Thursday are projected to lose their seats, including:

• Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt is set to lose Godalming and Ash to the Liberal Democrats
• Defence Secretary Grant Shapps is set to lose Welwyn Hatfield to Labour
• Justice Secretary Alex Chalk is set to lose Cheltenham to the Liberal Democrats
• Welsh Secretary David TC Davies set to lose Monmouthshire to Labour
• Chief Whip Simon Hart is set to lose Caerfyrddin to Labour
• Attorney General Victoria Prentis is set to lose Banbury to Labour
• Minister for Veterans Affairs Johnny Mercer is set to lose Plymouth Moor View to Labour
• Minister for Illegal Immigration Micheal Tomlinson is set to lose Mid Dorset and North Poole to the Liberal Democrats.

Another seven cabinet members are in races which are too-close-to-call, including:

• Leader of the House Penny Mordaunt in a race against Labour in Portsmouth North
• Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer in a race against the Liberal Democrats in Ely and East Cambridgeshire
• Transport Secretary Mark Harper in a race against Labour in Forest of Dean
• Deputy Foreign Secretary Andrew Mitchell in a race against Labour in Sutton Coldfield
• Science Secretary Michelle Donelan in a race against the Liberal Democrats in Melksham and Devizes.
• Conservative Party Chairman Richard Holden in a race against Labour in Basildon and Billericay
• Cabinet Office Minister Esther McVey in race against Labour in Tatton

The Conservatives are set to lose all their MPs in Wales and the model projects a Conservative wipeout in inner London. The City of Westminster is set to fall from the Conservatives for the first time since 1874. The Conservatives are set to hold only six seats in Greater London. For the first time in modern history, the Conservatives are facing wipe out in counties including Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Lancashire and Cumbria. However, unlike in 1997 where the Conservatives lost all MPs in Scotland and Wales, the Conservatives look set to hold three seats in Scotland.

Liberal Democrats set to return more than 50 MPs

The model finds the Liberal Democrats comfortably overtaking the SNP as the third party in the Commons, returning 52 MPs. The Liberal Democrats are making gains not just in Oxfordshire, Surrey and Somerset but also making gains in other parts of the country as well. The model projects the Liberal Democrats will increase their seat total more than four-fold from 2019, recovering to the level of seats they held in the 2000s before entering the coalition.

SNP reduced to 16 seats

The SNP’s long reign of dominance in Scotland is set to end with their projected seat total reduced to 16 seats, and Labour set to become the biggest party in Scotland with 33 seats and more than twice as many seats as the SNP. The model projects Stephen Flynn, the SNP’s Westminster Leader, in a too-close-to-call battle in his Aberdeen South seat.

Farage and Anderson set to win in Clacton and Ashfield

The model projects that Nigel Farage and Lee Anderson will be elected as Reform’s representation in Parliament. Boston and Skegness is also too close to call with Reform UK Chairman Richard Tice just 2 per cent behind Conservative Matt Warman. The model also finds that the party comes second place in 67 seats.

Greens to hold Brighton and too-close-to-call in Bristol Central

The model projects that the Green Party holds their parliamentary seat in Brighton Pavilion and it also finds the Greens co-leader Carla Denyer in a too-close-to-call race in Bristol Central challenging the Shadow Culture Secretary Thangam Debbonaire. The Greens also have the potential for an upset in formerly safe notional Tory seats of Waveney Valley and North Herefordshire. The Greens come second in 17 seats.

Starmer only popular in 270 seats

Despite the fact that Labour are on track to 430 seats, our MRP of Starmer’s approval rating reveals that the Labour leader is personally unpopular in 187 of those.

Jeremy Corbyn set to win Islington North

The model projects that Jeremy Corbyn wins the Islington North constituency on 43% of the vote, with Labour on 37% of the vote share. Another independent candidate and former MP Keith Vaz is in a too-close-to-call race against Labour in Leicester East.

FAQ

What is an MRP?

‘Multilevel Regression with Post-stratification’ (MRP) uses data from a voting intention poll to model how people will vote based on their demographics, voting behaviour and information about their constituency. These results are then applied to the demographic and electoral makeup of each constituency to make a constituency-level projection. The model is 'multilevel' because it uses both individual and constituency-level data. 

How is this different from your normal voting intention poll?

The voting intention regularly published by More in Common is a national estimate based on a representative sample of at least 2,000 people. It indicates roughly how many people in Great Britain intend to vote for one party or another. This is simple to calculate and allows us to track changes through time.

But if you want to project a national seat count, this isn’t as useful. No political party performs equally well in every seat, because their supporters are not evenly spread across the country. For example, a 70-year-old man who didn’t go to university and lives in a small village has a higher likelihood of voting Conservative than a 25-year-old woman renting a flat in a major city. The benefit of MRP is the ability to use information about the different people who live in every constituency across the country to project how many people will vote for each party.

How does the model account for those who don't know how they will vote?

When we ask people their voting intention, some people say they don’t know. We push them to say who they would vote for if they were forced to choose, and we use this response as their expected vote. Some people, when asked to imagine that they were forced to choose, still don’t know who they would vote for. Using our MRP model, we’re able to make a better guess at how these “double don’t knows” might end up voting. When training the model to project people’s voting intention based on their demographics, voting behaviour and information about their constituency, we excluded the responses of people who didn’t know who they would vote for (after the squeeze) from the training data. When we apply the model to all the voters in the constituency, it effectively means we estimate the votes of people who don’t know, according to how people like them (in terms of demographics and past voting behaviour) but who do know, intend to vote. So if someone lives in a rural area, is over 75 and voted Conservative in 2019, the model uses the fact that most over 75s in rural areas who voted Conservative in 2019 and do know who they’ll vote for say they will vote Conservative, to guess that if they do vote it will likely be for the Conservatives.

How does the model account for who will vote?

When we survey the public about who they will vote for, many of the responses come from people who will not vote in the General Election. Since past election turnout is one of the strongest and most consistent predictors of future turnout, we factor in whether people voted in 2019 into our projections of who will turnout in this election rather than relying solely on self-reported voting likelihood.

How does your final model differ from your previous models?

Fieldwork for this model was conducted over a shorter period of time than previous models - from 24th June to 1st July.

Also, in previous models, we included information about voters’ second choice parties - recognising their voting dynamics might change before election day as they became more engaged about the realistic competitors in their individual seat. Now, at the end of the campaign, we are more confident these dynamics are already reflected in the responses the model uses without the need for additional information.

Finally, we have used oversampling in constituencies with particular dynamics to better inform our model. MRP models are good at indicating how the parties might perform across different constituencies based on their demographic makeup. But they don’t account for local factors that impact a small number of constituencies, such as a popular incumbent, well known or controversial council policy. In certain areas oversampling helps us to capture outperformance of independent candidates or smaller parties. That said, it isn’t feasible to oversample in every constituency - so it would be a mistake to draw too much from the projected vote share in an individual constituency.