UK PM Johnson’s Conservatives have 7-point lead over Labour
Opposition Labour has closed the gap shown in previous polls.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson‘s Conservatives have a seven percentage-point lead over the opposition Labour Party ahead of a December 12 election, according to an ICM poll published by Reuters on Monday.
ICM’s first poll of the election campaign put the Conservatives on 38 percent and Labour on 31 percent.
The pro-European Union Liberal Democrats had the support of 15 percent of those surveyed, while the Brexit Party was on nine percent.
The poll of 2,047 people, carried out online between November 1 and 4, shows a narrower gap than recent surveys from other pollsters, which have put the Conservatives between 8 and 17 percentage points ahead of Labour.
ICM said the survey showed the two main parties losing a similar proportion of voters over Brexit.
It said 11 percent of those who voted Conservative at the last election in 2017 were now planning to vote for the Brexit Party, while 12 percent of those who backed Labour in 2017 intended to vote for the Liberal Democrats.
More than two-thirds of those who voted “Remain” in the Brexit referendum in 2016 and for the Conservatives in 2017 intended to stick with Johnson’s Conservatives, ICM said.