What the final Welsh poll of the General Election 2019 campaign shows as Labour faces historic shock

It could be a historic night for the Conservatives

Labour is on course for a disastrous General Election 2019 , according to a new poll of Welsh voters.

The latest opinion poll shows both Labour and the Conservatives are gaining support.

Labour has 40% support while the Conservatives have 37%.

If delivered on Thursday, it would be the Conservatives' highest vote share since 1900.

When the results were analysed by Professor Roger Awan-Scully of Cardiff University, he projects:

Labour would lose:

• Wrexham
• Vale of Clwyd
• Gower
• Cardiff North
• Delyn
• Bridgend
• Clwyd South
• Alyn and Deeside

Labour would drop from 28 to 20, compared to the last General Election.

The Conservatives would gain all those eight seats and win back Brecon and Radnorshire - the seat they lost in a by-election in August 2019.

Plaid Cymru's Ben Lake would lose Ceredigion to the Liberal Democrat candidate Mark Williams, a former MP for the constituency.

The polling has been carried out by YouGov for ITV Wales and Cardiff University.

In his analysis of the results Prof Awan-Scully says it would be the worst performance for Labour in terms of seat numbers in Wales since 1983.

At that time, there were only 38 seats, not 40 as there are now.

Prof Awan-Scully said it would be an "astonishing" performance for the Conservative party.

The previous Welsh-specific poll was on November 25. That said Labour was on course to lose four seats in Wales.

YouGov polled a representative sample of 1,020 Welsh adults 6-9 December 2019.

What the poll shows:

Opinion poll ahead of the General Election 2019

YouGov/ITV/Cardiff University

Prof Awan-Scully said: "These figures would enable the Labour party to continue their long run – unbroken since 1922 – of winning the most votes in Wales at every one of the last twenty-six general elections.

"But rarely if ever has the Tory challenge to Labour dominance been that strong. If our poll was reproduced on election day itself, this would be an historic result for the Conservatives in Wales. This would be their highest Welsh vote share since 1900 – thus, their highest ever in the era of universal (suffrage).

"The squeeze on the smaller parties seen in our previous two Welsh polls continues, with the ‘big two’ now winning nearly eighty percent of all electoral support. The contrast with May, when between them the Conservative and Labour parties won little more than twenty percent of the vote in the European Parliament election, is staggering."

He said that if Labour took 20 seats, it would put them in the lead in terms of parties but "would equal Labour’s worst performance in Wales since the war".

"It would be the best for the Conservatives in that era – even outdoing their showing in Margaret Thatcher’s 1983 landslide victory.

"The Welsh Conservatives would have made a very substantial contribution to delivering a parliamentary majority for Boris Johnson," he said.