Humza Yousaf braced for electoral disaster as devastating new poll shows SNP will lose half its 2019 seats

Humza Yousaf braced for electoral disaster as devastating new poll shows SNP will lose half its 2019 seats
Millie Cooke

By Millie Cooke


Published: 15/01/2024

- 09:45

Updated: 15/01/2024

- 10:19

The survey is the most extensive polling to be carried out since the last general election took place

The SNP will lose half the seats it won at the last general election, a devastating new poll has suggested.

A new survey conducted by YouGov, showed that the SNP will win just 25 seats.


In 2019, it won 48 seats.

The Labour Party, which lost many of its seats to the SNP in 2015, will win 24 seats in Scotland, the poll showed.

Humza Yousaf

The SNP will lose half the seats it won at the last general election, a devastating new poll has suggested

PA

Panicked Conservative MPs were also left reeling after the same polling put the party on course for the worst general election result in over 100 years.

Polling conducted by YouGov shows the party is heading for a 1997-style defeat, with every single Red Wall seat won from Labour by Boris Johnson in 2019 being lost.

The data, published after speaking to 14,000 people, forecasts that the Tories will retain just 169 seats.

Meanwhile, Labour would win 385 seats – handing the party a 120 seat majority.

The survey is the most extensive polling to be carried out since the last general election took place.

Just hours after the results were published, the party already appeared to be spiralling into meltdown, with alarm and dismay spreading through Tory ranks.Tory peer Zac Goldsmith took a swipe at the party for removing former PM Boris Johnson, saying: "Thank God for those clever-clog ‘Tory grandees’ who got rid of Boris. Dodged a bullet there didn’t they! Genius".

While former minister Simon Clarke demanded the party take action on migration in order to avoid being "destroyed" at the next election.

He said: "This result would represent a disaster for [the Conservatives] and our country. The time for half measures is over. We either deliver on small boats or we will be destroyed."

The devastating polling also suggests that as many as eleven Cabinet ministers could lose their seats - including Chancellor Jeremy Hunt and Defence Secretary Grant Shapps.

The party would win 196 fewer seats than in 2019, which is greater than the 178 lost by Sir John Major in 1997.

If the 11.5 per cent swing to Labour, predicted by the poll, comes to fruition, it would mark the biggest collapse in support for a governing party since 1906.

Such a swing is likely to mean Starmer will remain in power for at least a decade, as no party with such a significant majority has ever lost the subsequent election.

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