Liz Truss has brought the Conservative Party conference to a close with Labour continuing to enjoy its strongest performance in the opinion polls for more than 20 years.
The Prime Minister delivered her speech on a day that saw the Tories’ average poll rating drop to just 24%, 26 percentage points behind Labour.
The last time Labour had a similarly sized lead over the Conservatives was in the summer of 2001.
A collection of polls published in the wake of Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-budget on September 23 have all shown Labour extending its lead over the Tories, with one polling company putting the gap at 30 points (People Polling) and another at 33 points (YouGov).
These are the sorts of figures that would likely see a landslide Labour victory at a general election – were one to take place tomorrow, and were people to vote in the same way across the country.
Labour’s seven-day average poll share has climbed from 41% in the days just before the mini-budget to 50%, while the Tories have dropped 10 points from 34% to 24%, according to analysis by the PA news agency.
The Liberal Democrats have held steady on 10% while the Greens are currently on 5%.
A separate poll carried out on October 3-4 of voters in 40 so-called ‘Red Wall’ seats – former Labour constituencies now held by the Conservatives – put Labour on 61% and the Tories on 23%, a 38-point lead.
This is up from a 15-point lead just before the mini-budget, according to data published by the polling company Redfield & Wilton.
The equivalent figures at the 2019 election for these 40 seats were 47% for the Tories and 38% for Labour.
Opinion polls are snapshots of the prevailing public mood, not projections or forecasts.
With the next general election still more than two years away – the latest possible date is January 23 2025 – there is plenty of time for the national numbers to change.
But polls both shape and reflect the prevailing mood of the country, in turn affecting morale among politicians and party members alike.
The news for the Conservatives is equally grim when looking at Liz Truss’s popularity scores.
The Prime Minister’s ratings are already lower than any recorded for either Boris Johnson or the former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, according to a survey by YouGov carried out on October 1-2.
Ms Truss’s net favourability rating – the difference between the proportion of people saying they have a favourable opinion of her and those who have an unfavourable opinion – currently stands at minus 59 points.
This is lower than levels reached by both Mr Johnson, who hit minus 53 points in July of this year, and Mr Corbyn, who fell to minus 55 points in June 2019.
