The next UK general election is fast approaching, with most analysts expecting the vote to take place later this year.
After 13 years of Conservative government, Keir Starmer's Labor Party has been consistently leading in opinion polls since the start of 2022.
The latest is January 2025, when a general election could be held. Chancellor Rishi Sunak has the power to call a general election at any time before then, but in the face of potential defeat, experts believe he will postpone it in order to remain prime minister. Power longer.
The Guardian will track the latest polling averages from all of Britain's major polling companies up to election day.
Current voting intention
Moving 10-day polling average of GB voting intentions
Voting intentions over time
Latest average of all rolling 10-day polls showing UK voting intentions.
The Scottish National Party (SNP) is not included in the data used by the Guardian in the graph above. Opinion polls across the UK put the SNP vote at between 2% and 4% of the national vote. However, because of its geographical concentration in Scotland, it will win far more seats than other smaller parties, such as the Greens, which have a similar share of votes nationally. A targeted Scotland-only poll will give a better indication of how well Scotland will perform in the next election than the national poll mentioned above.
Opinion polls have only gone far enough to predict who will win in Britain's first-past-the-post voting system. What matters is the number of seats each party wins in parliament, which is determined by individual races in 650 constituencies.
What the latest polls mean for Congress
Seat projection from Electoral Calculus
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Predictions for the seats vary, but the ones shown above are from the polling firm Electoral Calculus. We conduct our own public opinion polls and also collect demographic data from the people we survey.
This data is used to create a mathematical model called a multilevel regression and posterior stratification (MRP) model, which aims to estimate the relationship between characteristics such as age, gender, and region of residence, and which party to vote for. will be entered. for.
By matching this with data on what types of people live in different constituencies in the UK, Electoral Calculus predicts which party will come out on top in each constituency.
How accurate is the seat projection?
Under Britain's first-past-the-post system, there is no clear correlation between poll numbers and seats, as it depends on the location of the vote. Rob Ford, a political science professor at the University of Manchester, described the general opinion poll's prediction of seats as a “loose standard'', saying: “Even if Labor leads by 15 points, it may still fall short of a majority; “There is a possibility that we will not reach a majority,” he said. majority. It depends on where that vote is. ”
As elections approach, polls become less predictable. Other limitations of predicting seat numbers from national opinion polls include the Liberal Democratic Party's large presence in certain constituencies, even though its public approval rating is much lower than that of the two major parties. , including the fact that it is difficult to estimate the Liberal Democratic Party's number of seats from national opinion polls. Also, national polls are not very informative about what happens in Scotland, and polls in Scotland are infrequent.
Data notes
This graph shows the 10-day moving average of each party's approval rating based on opinion polls across the UK. This does not include Northern Ireland, where there are different political parties. On a given day, the Guardian calculates each party's average approval rating across all opinion polls published over the past 10 days. Only polling companies that are members of the British Opinion Research Council are included.
Seat forecasts are derived monthly from election calculations, which apply models to polling and demographic data to estimate the number of seats each party is likely to win. They update this forecast monthly.
Illustration by Sam Kerr. Additional research by Gabrielle Smith, Emma Russell, and Lily Smith.
