A 2017 poll that projected Theresa May would take 50 per cent of the vote in the forthcoming election has been making the rounds on social media after the Conservatives took a 16-point lead over Labour today.
The Sunday Mirror ComRes poll, which canvassed opinion two months before the General Election, found Mrs May was on track for an overall majority of more than 200 in the crucial snap vote.
Had she pulled it off she would have beat the 418 seats Tony Blair won in the 1997 landslide that ushered in 13 years of New Labour rule, the article notes, while Jeremy Corbyn would be left reeling with just 90 MPs.
In the end, the Conservatives lost their majority and had to rely on support from the DUP to be able to form a government.
Labour took 261 seats, including many traditionally blue constituencies such as Kensington, Portsmouth and Canterbury.
Following the results, Corbyn said that he had “changed the face of British politics” as his party defied the polls and made a significant election breakthrough.
But as Boris Johnson piles on pressure for another snap election, the lessons learned in 2017 seem to have been forgot.
The latest Opinium poll shows the Conservatives have increased their lead to 40 per cent, with Labour stuck on 24 per cent.
The results have led to dismay in some quarters of the Labour Party, but as Lewis Goodall points out:
“Polls are valuable, polls are important, they affect and shape the political weather and the actions of the players but seeing how excited some people get by them it’s almost like 2017 never happened…”
