Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has suffered another pre-election blow, after a top polling expert warned the Conservatives that their chances of winning stand at just 1 per cent.
Sir John Curtice made the revelation during a speech at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, where the polling guru said there is a "99 per cent chance of Labour winning the next election".
Curtice argued that there is "clearly a very small chance that the Tories are going to be in Government after the autumn", telling the crowd: "Are you surprised?"
The Conservatives have sunk to their lowest poll rating since former leader Liz Truss’s mini-Budget.
Polling guru Sir John Curtice says Labour has a '99 per cent chance' of winning the next election
PA / GB News
Just 24 per cent of people polled by Savanta said they plan to vote Tory, compared with 44 per cent who chose Labour.
Curtice also claimed that Labour will be in a "much stronger position" to negotiate a minority government than the Conservatives, as the Tories have "no friends in the House of Commons".
Discussing his claims with Nigel Farage, Curtice told GB News he is "very careful about what he says", and explained his reasonings to the former Brexit Party MEP.
Curtice stated that currently, Rishi Sunak's Conservatives are "still quite a long way short" of securing a lead over Labour.
Rishi Sunak is facing increasing pressure from the Conservative Party ahead of the election
PA
Curtice explained: "What I said was in a presentation to fellow political scientists last night, is that there was a 99 per cent chance that Labour would form the next Government - and that is not the same thing."
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Curtice told Nigel: "Let me walk you through it. At the moment, the opinion polls on average have Labour 20 points ahead. Now let's look at recent full-length parliaments, like the parliament of 1992 and 97 or 2005 and 2010, and this is going to be a full-length parliament.
"What is the biggest narrowing of the lead that has occurred in the last eight months or so of such a parliament? It proves to be the six-point narrowing of the Conservative lead over Labour in 2010."
Curtice continued: "Let's also say that maybe the polls collectively will suffer exactly the worst of the recent polling failures, which is 1992, when they overestimated Labour's position relative to the Conservatives by about eight points. Let's put that in the mix as well.
"So we're taking two extreme events, adding them together, and we've still got Labour six points ahead."
Sir John Curtice has said the Tories need something 'unprecedented' to allow them to win the election
GB News
Curtice stated that this is now "probably hung Parliament territory rather than Labour majority territory".
He also explained that the 99 per cent is "not just the poll lead", but is because the "Conservatives are short of friends in the House of Commons".
Curtice added: "We know that the Democrats will not help sustain a minority Conservative administration. We certainly know the SNP won't. Maybe the DUP might, but whether they be willing to do so again, is a question mark.
"But to get to that situation, we're talking about the Conservatives needing to be at least 315, 316 seats or so. That implies at least a Conservative two-point lead over Labour. And we are still quite a long way short. So that's the calculation. It needs to be something unprecedented to get the Conservatives to a situation where they might be able to hang on to power."
