Grant Shapps quickly hung up the phone after he rang Sky News’ reporter Sam Coates during a live broadcast of the latest MRP polling results.
The MP for Welwyn Hatfield, who has held the seat since 2005, is one of several Conservative MPs predicted to lose their seat at the next General Election, due to take place on July 4th.
YouGov polling shows Labour is on track to better Sir Tony Blair’s landslide victory recorded in 1997, winning 422 seats to the Conservative’s 140.
The analysis has been published by the research company More in Common together with The News Agents podcast, and is based on voting intention data collected between April 9 and May 29 from 15,089 adults in Great Britain.
It uses a technique known as MRP (multi-level regression and post-stratification) to model the outcome of the election in every constituency across Britain, by identifying the views of different types of voters and then the type of voters in each seat.
Along with Mr Shapps and Ms Mordaunt, other ministers projected to lose their seats to Labour are Welsh Secretary David TC Davies and Scottish Secretary Alister Jack, while Justice Secretary Alex Chalk would be defeated by the Liberal Democrats.
The model projects Labour to win a total of 382 seats and a majority of 114, while the Conservatives would win 180.
The national share of the vote implied by the analysis is Labour 43%, Conservative 29%, Liberal Democrats 11%, Reform 8%, Green 5% and SNP 3%.
Luke Tryl, More in Common UK executive director, said: “While many things could change between now and July 4, Labour is on course to win a comfortable majority, with the most Labour gains in a single election since 1945, nearly doubling their seat count compared to 2019.
This is the painful moment Shapps realised that the future might not be so rosy for him.
Related: Labour ‘set for biggest majority in 23 years’, analysis suggests