THE Conservative party faces the prospect of losing the Basingstoke seat to the Labour party for the first time in history according to the latest YouGov MRP model.

In new data released by the market research provider from May 28 it predicts that the Conservatives would lose the Basingstoke constituency for the first time in a hundred years.

With the exception of a 1923-1924 Liberal MP, the town has elected Conservative MPs since 1885 making it a ‘safe seat’ for the party in previous years.

The closest it came to a non-Conservative victory was in 2001, when Andrew Hunter – who had been MP since 1983 – won by just 880 votes in what was to be his final election.

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However, this year Basingstoke has become a battleground with Conservative prospective parliamentary candidate Maria Miller – who has been Basingstoke’s MP since 2005 – facing the prospect of losing her seat to Labour's Luke Murphy. 

YouGov’s MRP projection of the 2024 general election suggests that Keir Starmer could be heading to Downing Street with an historic majority of 194 seats, including one in Basingstoke, which would be the second largest majority in British political history after Stanley Baldwin’s figure of 210 in 1924.

With a central projection of 422 Labour wins, this result would see Labour winning more seats than in the 1997 landslide when Tony Blair became prime minister with 179.

The estimated seat projections are based on modelled responses from 53,334 adults in England and Wales, and 5,541 in Scotland.

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In Basingstoke, the YouGov predictions show that Labour would win with 44 per cent; Conservatives would gain 30 per cent; Reform UK 11 per cent; Lib Dems eight per cent; Green seven per cent; and ‘other’ one per cent.

However, there are still more than two weeks to go until the general election on July 4, and the polls are not always an accurate indicator of how people will actually vote on the day.

The polls are simply a snapshot, not a definitive template for election day. MRP polling uses a complex model to interpret the data, adding other details about the respondents such as their age, qualification level, income, previous voting patterns and where they live.

This is then correlated with census-type data to provide numbers for each area, with the polling data then adjusted accordingly.

While polls at previous general elections have not always turned out to be accurate projections, it was the YouGov MRP model that correctly forecast 2017’s surprise hung parliament.

Now, with the polling industry gaining an influx of people with skills not just in advanced data science but AI, MRP polls have become even more sophisticated.

However, only time will tell what happens on the day, with some people choosing to vote tactically, or changing their mind.