Rishi Sunak will need to pull off the biggest political comeback in more than 70 years if he is to win the next election, analysis suggests.
With the Tories trailing Labour by about 20 points, a study of polling records going back to 1951 reveals that no government has successfully closed such a large gap this close to a general election.
It suggests that the best Sunak can hope for on the basis of historical trends would be a swing of about 14 per cent, which would not be enough to keep the prime minister in Downing Street.
Sir John Curtice, professor of politics at Strathclyde University and a polling expert, said that until now the Conservatives had been able to take comfort from the fact that they had been 20 points behind Labour in the run-up to the 1992 election.
However, he said that by this point — probably ten months out from the election — the polls showed a “significant reduction in Labour’s lead”. He added: “Now, in contrast, the Conservatives find themselves almost as far behind Labour as they were ten months before the 1997 election — and that election, of course, did not end happily for the Conservatives.
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“They ended up with just 165 seats — almost identical to the figure anticipated by recent controversial YouGov polling. The Conservatives, it seems, are at risk of running out of time in their quest to revive their electoral prospects.”
The analysis of historical polling data shows that although governments do traditionally claw back support in the run-up to an election, no party in recent political history has recovered as much ground as the Conservatives need to recoup this time round.
The Conservative Party’s biggest comeback win was in 1992, when the party was 6.7 points behind Labour at this stage of the campaign. That year’s election has been cited as a model for a Tory comeback this time round by Isaac Levido, the party’s election supremo.
However, despite going on to win the election with 41 per cent of the vote, the swing was significantly less than that needed by Sunak this time round.
Tory strategists have repeatedly insisted that an election victory is possible, citing the large number of undecided voters — particularly those who voted for the party in 2019. Of those, YouGov polling shows that 20 per cent say that they do not know who they are going to back — and only 12 per cent say that they intend to support Labour.
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The hope among Conservatives is that if the polls do narrow, they will be able to squeeze the Reform vote by warning that it would lead to a Labour victory. However, the concern is that so far Labour’s poll lead has been widening, not narrowing. About half of all voters say at the moment that there are no circumstances in which they would consider voting Conservative at the next election.
