Key points

• Labour lead of 17% over Conservatives
• Predicted Labour landslide with majority of over 100 in parliament
• Over half of Conservative MPs predicted to lose their seats
• Eight cabinet ministers predicted to lose their seats

Find Out Now and election experts Electoral Calculus have run a MRP poll on voting intention for Westminster. This was a large-scale poll, involving over 10,400 respondents, carried out from 23-27 September, after the mini-budget.

The poll asked GB residents whether and how they intend to vote if there were an imminent general election. It also asked voters for their reaction to the mini-budget.

The headline voting intention is shown in the highlighted column:

Party	Vote share at GE 2019 (pc)	Previous poll Dec 2021	Previous poll Feb 2021	Current Estimated Vote Share (pc)	Estimated Change (pc)
CON	45	36	32	28	-17
LAB	33	35	38	45	+12
LIB	11	11	13	11	+0
Reform	2	3	3	3	+1
Green	3	8	7	6	+3

This gives an estimated Labour lead over the Conservatives of 16pc. That is a big gain for Labour since February, when Labour were only 6pc ahead. It represents an overall swing of 15pc from Conservative to Labour since the last general election.

The regression techniques of MRP polling allow predictions to be made for each individual seat in GB. The number of seats predicted to be won by each party is shown in the next table.

Party	Number of Seats at GE 2019	Predicted Number of Seats	Predicted Change
CON	365	174	-191
LAB	203	381	+178
SNP	48	51	+3
LIB	11	21	+10
Plaid	4	4	0
Green	1	1	0
Reform	0	0	0
Total	632	632	0

The prediction is that the Conservatives would be swept from power and Labour would have a landslide majority of 112 seats in the House of Commons. Keir Starmer would be Prime Minister without needing to depend on support from the SNP or the Liberal Democrats.  

Reaction to the mini-budget

We also asked people “What did you think of the mini-budget on Friday which made unfunded tax cuts to try to boost growth?”. Most people though the mini-budget was bad or very bad. Responses are shown in the table below

Response	All voters	CON voters in 2019	LAB voters in 2019
Bad / Very bad	34%	20%	54%
Neutral / don’t know	52%	53%	40%
Good / Very good	14%	27%	6%
Net Good minus Bad	-20%	+7%	-48%

Table: Excludes those who refused to say

Overall, 34% of people though the mini-budget was bad or very bad, 52% of people were neutral or weren’t sure, and 14% of people thought it was good or very good. Those saying bad out-numbered those who thought it was good by 20%.

Among Conservative voters there was more support for the mini-budget than opposition, though most Conservative voters weren’t sure either way. Labour voters were strongly opposed.

Predicted seat changes by MP

Some notable MPs are in danger of losing their seats, including eight cabinet ministers:

• Simon Clarke (Middlesbrough South and Cleveland East), Levelling Up
• Jacob Rees-Mogg (Somerset North East), Business
• Alok Sharma (Reading West), Minister of State COP26
• Chloe Smith (Norwich North), Work and Pensions
• Alister Jack (Dumfries and Galloway), Scottish Secretary
• Robert Buckland (Swindon South), Welsh Secretary
• Penny Mordaunt (Portsmouth North), Leader of the House
• Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen), Party Chairman

Also Boris Johnson (former Prime Minister), Iain Duncan Smith (former party leader), Liam Fox (former cabinet minister), and Grant Shapps (former cabinet minister) are all set to lose their seats as well.

See the full list on the Electoral Calculus website.

Quotes

Martin Baxter, CEO of Electoral Calculus: “Our new poll confirms that Liz Truss’ government has got off to a dreadful start with the British public. The Conservatives won in 2019 partly because Boris Johnson was an electoral asset and Jeremy Corbyn was an electoral liability. That’s all changed, and not to the Conservatives’ advantage. On top of that, the mini-budget, with its unfunded tax cuts, has not been any more popular with voters than it has been with the financial markets.”One glimmer of hope for the Conservatives is that Ed Miliband enjoyed a similar large poll lead and predicted majority back in 2013 without managing to win the subsequent general election, but there can be no guarantees that history will repeat itself again exactly.”

Chris Holbrook, CEO of Find Out Now: “Truss and Kwarteng’s apparent gamble for growth seems to have alienated another swathe of Tory voters, while Sir Keir’s policy of being “boring” quietly amasses a potential majority.”

Technical Details

Find Out Now polled 10,435 GB adults online between 23-27 September 2022. The sample was weighted to be representative by gender, age, social grade, other demographics and past voting patterns. Regression techniques were used to infer projected seat results.

Find Out Now and Electoral Calculus are both members of the British Polling Council and abide by its rules.

The British Polling Council comments “All polls are subject to a wide range of potential sources of error. On the basis of the historical record of the polls at recent general elections, there is a 9 in 10 chance that the true value of a party’s support lies within 4 points of the estimates provided by this poll, and a 2 in 3 chance that they lie within 2 points.”

Full Tables (Excel spreadsheet)