LONDON — An exit poll suggested Thursday that British Prime Minister Theresa May’s gamble in calling an early election has backfired spectacularly, with her Conservative Party in danger of losing its majority in Parliament.
An opposition Labour Party that had been written off by many pollsters surged in the final weeks of a campaign that was marred by deadly attacks in Manchester and London. If accurate, the result will confound those who said Labour’s left-wing leader, Jeremy Corbyn, was electorally toxic.
The survey predicted the Conservatives would get 314 seats and the Labour Party 266. It projected 34 for the Scottish National Party and 14 for the Liberal Democrats. The pound lost more than 2 cents against the dollar within seconds of the exit poll announcement, before recovering slightly.
Based on interviews with voters leaving polling stations across the country, the poll is conducted for a consortium of U.K. broadcasters and regarded as a reliable, though not exact, indicator of the likely result.
If confirmed, the result will be humiliating for May, who called a snap election in the hope of increasing her majority and strengthening Britain’s hand in exit talks with the European Union. If she has failed, she could face pressure to resign.
“If the poll is anything like accurate, this is completely catastrophic for the Conservatives and for Theresa May,” former Conservative Treasury chief George Osborne told ITV.
“Clearly if she’s got a worse result than two years ago and is almost unable to form a government, then she, I doubt, will survive in the long term as Conservative Party leader.”
A party needs to win 326 seats in the 650-seat House of Commons to form a majority government. The Conservatives held 330 seats in the last Parliament, compared with 229 for Labour, 54 for the Scottish National Party and nine for the Lib Dems.
During the last election, in 2015, the Conservatives did better than the exit poll predicted, and senior Conservatives said they would take a wait-and-see approach.
“It’s still very, very early in the evening,” Northern Ireland Secretary James Brokenshire said. “It’s too early in the night to be drawing conclusions.”
The forecast is much better than expected for the opposition Labour Party, which had been expected to lose seats.
Labour economy spokesman John McDonnell, one of Corbyn’s main lieutenants, urged caution. “I’m a natural pessimist, and we’ll see whether I’m an optimist in the morning,” he said.