John Curtice gives verdict on local election results
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The Tories are on course to lose 500 councillors in the local elections, according to a leading polling expert.
Professor Sir John Curtice said the Conservatives are headed for "one of the worst, if not the worst" performances by the party in 40 years.
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He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "So far they are basically losing half of the seats they are trying to defend. If that continues they may end up losing 500 or so seats, which is the thing they were meant to avoid.
"Early days yet, but where we have got the detailed voting numbers, it looks as though the Conservative vote is a wee bit down on where it was last year.
"We are probably looking at certainly one of the worst, if not the worst, Conservative performances in local government elections for the last 40 years."
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Some 35 of the 107 councils were votes were held on Thursday counted overnight making grim reading for the Prime Minister.
The Tories lost control of three authorities and 96 councillors lost their seats.
Labour gained three authorities and 58 councillors, but lost control of Oldham Council which has been largely blamed on the party's Gaza stance.
Prof Curtice said: "The key message from these local ballot boxes is that Mr Sunak's project, indeed probably his principal purpose, which was to reverse the damage that he inherited, a party that was 25 points behind in the polls, that project has not made much progress, much as the opinion polls have been telling us, much as previous parliamentary by-elections have been telling us."
He said the "damage" was done to the Conservatives by Boris Johnson and the partygate row then Liz Truss's mini-budget.
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The polling expert added: "Those are the two principal events that meant Rishi Sunak, when he won the prize, won a prize that was perhaps not necessarily worth winning and what I think we're now discovering it's going to be very difficult indeed to turn it around.
"Whether somebody else could have done any better who knows. It may well be the case irrespective of who was the Conservative leader after Liz Truss, the electorate wasn't going to be willing to forget those two pretty significant errors, particularly at a time when the economy is struggling."
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Turning to Sir Keir Starmer's party, Prof Curtice said: "For Labour they profit from the Conservatives' misfortune.
"They've probably not made much more progress than last year but at least they've held on to where they were at last year in terms of share of the vote.
"The one fly in the ointment is not just Oldham it's in general they are struggling in areas with large Muslim communities."
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