UK PM’s Conservative Party on course to win majority: Poll analysis
LONDON British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is on track to secure a decisive majority of almost 50 lawmakers ahead of Britain's Dec 12 national election, according to an analysis of thousands of interviews from opinion polls.
Mr Johnson's Conservative Party looks likely to score around 349 seats in the House of Commons, a gain of 57 seats, according to the results from number-crunching firm Datapraxis, published by the Sunday Times newspaper.
The main opposition Labour is on course to lose around 30 lawmakers, the model showed, leaving it with 213 seats.
Aside from the Conservatives, the other big winner looks set to be the Scottish National Party. Set to regain 14 lawmakers, the model suggest it will cement its status as Britain's third-largest party in terms of number of seats, the model showed.
The predictive model incorporated data from 270,000 interviews conducted by polling company YouGov.
A YouGov poll published earlier on Saturday showed the Conservatives' vote share at 42 per cent, 12 points ahead of Labour.
Despite the poll lead, the election outcome remains uncertain, and commentators called for caution, mindful that former prime minister Theresa May had a huge poll lead in the 2017 general election, which rapidly melted.
Mr Johnson unveiled his Conservative Party's manifesto released yesterday, pledged to move on from Brexit and austerity in a bid to secure a general election victory.
The main plank of the Conservative manifesto is the Brexit deal Mr Johnson negotiated with Brussels last month.
He claims the treaty is "oven-ready" and good to go - as long as he can get a majority. He insists the deal will allow Britain to regain control over its laws, money and immigration policy.
He promises to end the years of reining in the budget deficit by pumping billions of pounds into public services.
Mr Johnson has pledged to make the streets safer by recruiting 20,000 police officers.
He is also committed to increasing the National Health Service budget by £33.9 billion (S$59 billion) by 2023-2024 and has pledged to upgrade 20 hospitals and rebuild 40 over the next decade.
The Conservatives have also said 50 million more appointments in family doctors' surgeries will be created every year if they win a majority. - REUTERS, AFP
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