By Grimsby and Scunthorpe seats on a ‘knife edge’ if general election were held now
If a general election were held tomorrow, the Great Grimsby and Scunthorpe seats would be on a ‘knife edge’ according to a new survey.
YouGov has predicted that if a general election were held now, of the 88 seats Conservatives either won from Labour in 2019 or currently hold with a majority of fewer than 15 points, only three would remain Conservative.
Other high profile ‘Red Wall’ Conservative gains from 2019 would fall straight back into Labour hands if an election were held tomorrow, including Burnley, Blyth Valley, Leigh, and Stoke-on-Trent North.
Other constituencies sit on an “absolute knife-edge”, with Labour’s predicted winning margin in each of Bishop Auckland, Scunthorpe, and Great Grimsby all less than two points.
In Scunthorpe, Labour would win by the tiny margin of one point after Tory MP Holly Mumby-Croft took the seat for the Conservatives with a 6,451 majority over Nic Dakin in 2019.
In the last election, Lia Nici took the Great Grimsby seat from Labour’s Melanie Onn, with a substantial majority of 7,331 votes, putting the Conservatives in charge of the constituency for the first time in 74 years.
While the Scunthorpe MP has been relatively silent around partygate and her support for the PM, Grimsby MP Lia Nici openly offered her support last week.
Ms Nici, who appointed Mr Johnson’s priavte secretary in February, said the PM should not have received a fixed penalty and added that he was a “good prime minister”.
The study also shows that the Brexit divide that dominated the last two elections, which YouGov accurately predicated, has started to weaken.
However, YouGov added in their conclusion that there is “a lot of uncertainty around these figures”.
They added: “The next election is of course not scheduled for another two years, and the boundaries on which it will be fought are currently planned to change. What’s more, no fewer than 25 battleground constituencies are currently forecasted to be won by a margin of less than five percentage points – well inside what we would consider a ‘margin of error’ for an exercise of this nature.”
(Image: Reuters)
