Conservatives and Labour neck-and-neck in new UK opinion polling
The Conservatives’ lead over Labour in UK opinion polling has been dramatically slashed, after three different surveys put the government ahead by three points or less.
Opinium and Deltapoll have the Tories ahead by three per cent and a Survation poll gives the party a two per cent lead in a dramatic turnaround from just two months ago.
Opinium polling from the end of March gave the Tories a commanding 26 per cent lead over Labour, with public approval of Boris Johnson’s government at 55 per cent.
Public approval for the government has since crashed, as the UK’s total death toll has now reached the second-highest in the world at more than 40,000.
The government’s decision to not sack Dominic Cummings, the Prime Minister’s chief aide, after a series of stories claiming he broke the lockdown to travel to Durham also dented the public’s faith in the government.
Now, Sir Keir Starmer trails Johnson by just one per cent as preferred prime minister and the government has an approval rating of 34 per cent, according to Opinium.
The company’s head of political polling Adam Drummond said: “The public are starting to lose confidence in the government’s ability to handle the crisis – approval of how they are handling things has dropped from 65 per cent at the beginning of lockdown to just 34 per cent today.
“Public appetite for lifting the lockdown measures remains minimal with even Conservative voters more likely to say that things are being released too quickly than too slowly.
“Meanwhile Keir Starmer’s ‘constructive opposition’ positioning is continuing to pay off with the Labour leader drawing almost level with Boris Johnson on the ‘best prime minister’ question as well as overtaking the PM on a series of leadership attributes such as competence and trustworthiness.”