The opinion polls could be “too good to be true”, Labour’s Wes Streeting has suggested.
The shadow health secretary claimed that the conversations he is having on the doorstep “don’t reflect” current poll numbers, which consistently show Labour with a lead of around 20 points over the Conservatives.
“The polling industry is an industry that is addicted to calling it wrong and doing it very loudly”, Streeting added.
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Rishi Sunak’s party is now regularly beaten into third place by Reform UK.
Streeting’s comments come after the election’s final leaders debate on Wednesday evening, which snap polls indicated was a far closer run contest than the general election at large.
Polling company YouGov asked 1,716 viewers for their verdict on the debate. Asked who performed best and leaving aside party preferences, the result was split 50/50.
Another snap poll was conducted by More In Common, with 1,525 respondents: 56 per cent said Labour leader Keir Starmer won, versus 44 per cent who said Sunak did.
Commenting on the national poll numbers on Thursday morning, Wes Streeting told GB News: “We’ve got a week now in which people need to decide to choose change, and you only get change if you vote for it.
“And it’s no secret that Conservatives haven’t run a brilliant election campaign, let’s be honest. But the one thing they are doing, I think, quite effectively, is to suggest that there’s an inevitability about a Labour government.”
He added: “In the conversations on the doorstep, they just don’t reflect these wild polls. I’m still talking to undecided voters in huge numbers a week out from the general election, and to people who voted by post who said to me just last weekend when I was in the northeast, ‘Actually, I voted Conservative’.
“I’ve been brought up to believe if it looks too good to be true, it’s too good to be true. It doesn’t reflect what we’re feeling. And more than that, the polling industry is an industry that is addicted to calling it wrong and doing it very loudly. They called it wrong on Brexit. They called it wrong on Trump. They called it wrong in a number of general elections. It’s not the pollsters and it’s not the bookies that decide general elections, it’s millions of voters.”
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