General Election 2024: Late polling has labour set for landslide while parts of county finely balanced

Last minute opinion polls have Labour set for a landslide at this week’s general election – but some local seats remain fiercely contested in the run up to polling on July 4.

Most pollsters have Labour as virtually certain to form the country’s next government, with latest figures from research firm Survation showing the party as being on course to win around 484 Parliamentary seats.

Forecasting firm Electoral Calculus puts that number slightly lower at 470, and also predicts a close race between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats to form the main opposition.

However opinion polls have been wrong in the past, most recently in 2017 when Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party defied gloomy predictions to force a hung parliament which eventually saw the Conservatives and the Democratic Unionist Party forming a minority government.

Locally, South Shropshire (formerly Ludlow) could go down to the wire, with Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives all believing they are in with a chance of taking the seat. However both YouGov and Electoral Calculus are currently predicting a narrow Conservative hold for Stuart Anderson ahead of Lib Dem rival Matthew Green and Labour candidate Simon Thomson.

A two way fight in North Shropshire between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats is predicted to go the way of incumbent Helen Morgan, with Electoral Calculus predicting a 91% probability of Lib Dem victory over Tory rival Simon Baynes.

The seat of Shrewsbury (formerly Shrewsbury and Atcham) is expected to become a Labour seat, with Julia Buckley predicted to have a 94% probability of winning by Electoral Calculus, with YouGov and Survation in agreement.

In Telford and Wrekin, pollsters say The Wrekin will also be a close call with Survation predicting a Labour victory while YouGov and Electoral Calculus both predict a Tory hold for Mark Pritchard. Telford however is widely expected to swing from Conservative to Labour, with Shaun Davies favourite to take the seat with all three polling firms.

Meanwhile research from YouGov released today showed nearly half of Labour voters surveyed said their main reason for voting was to remove the Tory government from power, but were unsure about their party’s policies.

“More than four in ten (44%) of those who voted Tory five years ago and who are now voting for Labour say that their main reason for doing so is to remove the Conservatives,” said a spokesperson from YouGov.

“Relatively few gave an affirmative answer for their main reason for backing Labour – 5% said it was because they agreed with their policies (the third most common answer overall), while 4% said it was to support the NHS and reduce waiting times.

“But what is clear is that a driving force behind the expected Labour landslide is a strong desire to remove the Conservatives from power – a sentiment that will have implications Keir Starmer, who must keep the public behind his party over the coming years when that motivation is gone.”