Red Wall: Conservatives to lose all seats in North of England in poll

Savanta's latest MRP poll, which uses a statistical methodology called multi-regression and poststratification in order to make a more accurate prediction of wider populations rather than just those who are sampled, has shown that the Conservative party would be completely wiped out in the North of England if a general election were held tomorrow.

The last time Savanta conducted the same research, in September, it showed the Conservatives holding onto Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's Richmond constituency, as well as the traditionally safe Tory seats of Thirsk & Malton and Skipton & Ripon. The latest poll figures come after the political parties held their Autumn conferences and predicts the Conservatives will lose 296 seats across the UK in the next general election.

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It sees Labour gaining 280 seats in the House of Commons, leaving them with a total of 482 MPs and majority of 314. It would mean that nearly three-quarters of seats in the House of Commons would be held by Labour MPs.

Since the last polling conducted by Savanta, there's been a 3 point increase in support for Labour to 48%, while the Conservatives drop 5 points to only 28%.

The news comes three years to the day after the Conservative party won the 2019 general election. An election where they won their highest number and proportion of seats since 1987, and enjoyed their highest share of the popular vote since Margaret Thatcher was elected Prime Minister in 1979.

The gains they made in 2019 were in traditionally Labour-voting constituencies, since dubbed 'The Red Wall', with many new Conservative MPs holding majorities of less than 1,000 votes. However, with no Conservative MPs north of Lichfield in the Midlands, the latest poll and modelling makes for depressing reading for Tory politicians.

The poll map from Savanta, modelled by Electoral Calculus, shows no Conservative MPs in the North of England if a general election were to be held tomorrow. (Image: Savanta)

Chris Hopkins, Political Research Director at Savanta, said of the findings: “Last time we published an MRP model, I spoke of both the potential and precarious nature of the 56-seat majority and 12pt lead the poll gave the Labour Party during their conference. Even the most optimistic Labour supporter would not have foreseen what was to come, such was the subsequent Conservative collapse, and therefore this latest MRP model reflects the position now, of two parties experiencing widely differing electoral fortunes.

“But we must still express caution. Many seats going to Labour in this model, including a few that could be deemed ‘Red Wall’, still indicate a 40% or higher chance of remaining Conservative, and while that would have little impact on the overall election result, it does show that if Rishi Sunak can keep narrowing that Labour lead, point-by-point, the actual results come 2024 could look very different to this nowcast model.”

There is currently no date for the next general election to be held, although legally the government must hold one before January 2025, leading many political experts to expect it to come in late Autumn 2024.

While Savanta conducted the research, the modelling of the data was conducted by another company, Electoral Calculus.

Martin Baxter, Founder and CEO of Electoral Calculus, said: “This is an interesting poll, because it is the first MRP we have done since the Conservatives slid so far behind Labour, and therefore we have very little to compare it with. MRP results are different to applying uniform national swing (UNS) to the 2019 General Election baseline. The UNS prediction would give the Conservatives about 24 more seats than this model.

“Previous elections suggests that MRP is usually more accurate than UNS predictions, but we are in uncharted electoral waters and uncertainty is higher than usual.”

The sample of 6,237 respondents were interviewed by Savanta from 2-5 December 2022.

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