UK PM Boris Johnson on course to win parliamentary majority

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is on course to win a majority of 68 in parliament at the Dec. 12 election, according to a model from pollsters YouGov that accurately predicted the 2017 election.

Johnson has pledged to deliver Brexit by Jan. 31 if he wins the election after nearly four years of political crisis that has shocked allies of what was once considered one of the pillars of Western economic and political stability.

His Conservative Party could win 359 seats out of 650, up from 317 in the 2017 general election and the best result for the party since Margaret Thatcher’s 1987 victory, according to the YouGov model, called Multilevel Regression and Post-stratification – or ‘MRP’ for short.

“Our first MRP model projection for the 2019 election suggests that this time round the Conservatives are set for a majority,” said Anthony Wells, director of political and social research at YouGov.

“The swing to the Conservative party is bigger in areas that voted to Leave in 2016, with the bulk of the projected Tory gains coming in the North and the urban West Midlands, as well as former mining seats in the East Midlands.”

The Labour Party is on track to secure 211 seats, down from 262, according to the model. The SNP were on 43, the Lib Dems on 13 and the Brexit Party winning no seats.

Sterling, which rose earlier when rumours of the poll circulated, shot up when the poll was published, rising half a cent in minutes to hit a day’s high of $1.2948.