Defence Secretary Grant Shapps and Leader of the House of Commons Penny Mordaunt are among several Cabinet ministers at risk of losing their seats at the General Election, while Labour could win its biggest majority in 23 years, new analysis suggests.
Sir Keir Starmer is projected to become prime minister next month with his party clocking up more gains than at any election since 1945, leaving the Conservatives potentially with their lowest number of MPs since 2001.
At the same time the Liberal Democrats could more than double the number of MPs they won at the last election in 2019.
The analysis has been published by the research company More in Common together with The News Agents podcast, and is based on voting intention data collected between April 9 and May 29 from 15,089 adults in Great Britain.
It uses a technique known as MRP (multi-level regression and post-stratification) to model the outcome of the election in every constituency across Britain, by identifying the views of different types of voters and then the type of voters in each seat.
Along with Mr Shapps and Ms Mordaunt, other ministers projected to lose their seats to Labour are Welsh Secretary David TC Davies and Scottish Secretary Alister Jack, while Justice Secretary Alex Chalk would be defeated by the Liberal Democrats.
The model projects Labour to win a total of 382 seats and a majority of 114, while the Conservatives would win 180.
The national share of the vote implied by the analysis is Labour 43%, Conservative 29%, Liberal Democrats 11%, Reform 8%, Green 5% and SNP 3%.
Luke Tryl, More in Common UK executive director, said: “While many things could change between now and July 4, Labour is on course to win a comfortable majority, with the most Labour gains in a single election since 1945, nearly doubling their seat count compared to 2019.
“The Conservatives on the other hand are forecast to enter opposition holding only marginally more seats than they did after the 1997 landslide, suggesting a steep path to recovery.
“It’s worth noting however that there are currently 43 seats that the Conservatives are projected to lose by less than four points, which means any tightening in the race could see a much smaller Labour majority.
“There are also 49 seats which the Conservatives are currently projected to hang on to by just 4%, which means it wouldn’t take much movement for the Conservatives to head to a record defeat, potentially worse than that seen in 1997.”
A separate MRP analysis, carried out by YouGov for Sky News, is due to be released later on Monday.
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