What do the latest polls tell us?

The Conservatives have fallen to near their lowest level on the BBC poll tracker since the end of October 2022, when Rishi Sunak replaced Liz Truss as prime minister, writes senior political analyst Peter Barnes.

During her premiership there was a sudden and dramatic fall in the Conservative poll rating, matched by a rapid increase in support for Labour.

It followed her government’s ‘mini-budget’, including plans for big tax cuts without equivalent spending cuts, which spooked financial markets and was at least partly responsible for a fall in the value of the pound and a spike in borrowing costs.

There had been hopes among Tory MPs that this government’s Budget, in March, would improve their fortunes. Instead, the defection of Lee Anderson to Reform UK and the row about alleged comments made by a major donor to the party seemed to cause the mood among Conservative MPs to darken.

However, there is still a big difference between recent polls and what happened when Liz Truss was PM.

Over recent months there’s been a more gradual decline in support for the Tories, with Labour not really seeing any significant change.

The only party which has gone up is Reform UK who are now at 12% on the poll tracker – their highest level since the party changed its name from the Brexit Party after the last general election.

How big are the gaps between parties?

All polls are based on a sample of people interviewed, typically more than 1,000, which is then weighted to be representative of the country.

There is always a margin of error, meaning the real percentage could be higher or lower than any one poll suggests.

We estimate that the true support for each party lies within the ranges shown here.

Individual poll data is published online by the different companies.

Where a party has polled less than 0.5%, it is shown in the table below as 0 due to rounding down the numbers.