Labour On Course To Win Crucial By-Elections, Says Polling Expert

Labour is on course to win two crucial by-elections next month, according to a polling expert.

In what would be another huge blow for Rishi Sunak, Carl Shoben of Survation said Keir Starmer’s party are favourites to seize both Mid-Bedfordshire and Tamworth from the Conservatives.

Both by-elections are set to take place on October 19 following the resignations of Nadine Dorries and Chris Pincher.

Dorries retained Mid-Bedfordshire at the 2019 election with a majority of nearly 25,000, while Pincher was re-elected in Tamworth by 19,634 votes.

But appearing on Sky News on Thursday evening, Shoben said his firm’s research suggested Labour was set to pull off two seismic victories.

He said: “At Survation we do internal modelling on every constituency in the country and our current internal for [Tamworth] would predict that this would be a Labour victory.

″Now just to balance that, that is our modelling for a general election. For a by-election, however, we think that it’s more likely to be in Labour’s favour than a general election because of the context with which the by-election is being fought.”

On Mid-Bedfordshire, Shoben said it was a three-way fight between the Tories, Labour and the Lib Dems.

But he added: “Our internal modelling suggests that Labour are the favourites for this seat.

″From what we know, we believe Labour are the main challenger [to the Tories] and so are probably favourites to win this seat.”

Labour victories in both of those seats would come hard on the heels of the party’s by-election victory in Selby and Ainsty in July, when the party overturned a Tory majority of 20,000.