Is the general election a foregone conclusion?

If the polls are correct, Labour is on course to win the general election today with one of the biggest majorities Britain has ever seen.

Keir Starmer's party is "virtually certain" to win more seats than they did in 1997 under Tony Blair, according to the latest Survation MRP polling. Its prediction is that Labour will win 485 out of a total of 650 seats; Blair's New Labour won 418 seats in the 1997 landslide. 

Meanwhile, Rishi Sunak's beleaguered Conservative Party looks to be heading for the worst result in its electoral history. The Survation poll says the Tories will only just do well enough to become Britain's official opposition, with 64 MPs compared with the Liberal Democrats' tally of 61. 

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What did the commentators say?

It's time for the Conservative Party to "read the writing on the wall", said the former home secretary Suella Braverman in The Telegraph: "it's over and we need to prepare for the reality and frustration of opposition". 

The Conservative vote is "evaporating from both Left and Right", said Braverman. And while critics may "cite Boris, Liz, Rwanda and, I can immodestly predict, even me as all being fatal to our 'centrist' vote", the reality is that the party is "haemorrhaging votes largely to Reform".

That's because the Tories "failed to cut immigration or tax, or deal with the net zero and woke policies we have presided over for 14 years", said Braverman. "There's a reason why insincere posturing isn't fooling anyone now, and it's our record in office." 

After the "daily noise" of the news falls away, the history books will be "quite kind" to Sunak, a prime minister who has "brought an element of political and economic stability to the UK after the absence of either", said the BBC's political editor Chris Mason. 

But the PM also finds himself up against the cold historical fact that "no party has ever won five general elections in a row in modern times", added Mason. 

Sunak may well be far behind in the polls, but anyone who thinks a Labour majority is a "foregone conclusion" should consider recent YouGov research, which suggests swing voters could still deny Labour an election landslide, said the Daily Mail in a leader article.

According to analysis of the data if just 34,000 voters switch to Conservative in marginal constituencies, then Starmer's anticipated majority could be as much as halved – and if 132,000 people were to do so, he could fail to win a majority altogether. 

"That is less than 0.3 per cent of those registered to vote, showing how vulnerable the Labour lead is," said the paper. And there is "precious little love in the country" for Starmer, with his current level of support as a leader "less than Jeremy Corbyn enjoyed in 2017". 

What next?

In an election campaign with little excitement and a "seemingly inevitable result" a "small but very noisy section of the British news media" have turned to opinion polls for their "source of fun", said John Harris in The Guardian. 

Never has a campaign been "so dominated" by polls. The fact that YouGov used MRP polling to "unexpectedly predict 2017's hung parliament" has now given the method  "an air of quasi-scientific magic". The publication of each new MRP poll now is "greeted in some quarters with a huge level of expectation". 

Despite predictions of a "full-blown Starmergeddon, and the advent of a one-party state", until this morning "no one had voted and nothing had actually happened".  And neither can anyone be entirely certain that the predictions are "in any way accurate".

Polls are, of course, sometimes wrong. But if the industry has called this election wrong, "they wouldn't just be wrong, they would be wrong by a bigger magnitude than ever before – just to get to a hung parliament not a Conservative victory", said Paula Surridge, professor of political sociology at the University of Bristol, speaking to The Guardian's First Edition newsletter. 

An exit poll at 10pm this evening will give the first sense of how the country has voted. By 7am almost all seats will have been declared, with the country waking up either to the news of a new Labour government in Westminster – or, far less likely but a possibility – a stunning escape from electoral wipeout by the Conservatives.