A NEW General Election poll shows the Conservatives holding onto both Herefordshire seats, but with much reduced majorities.

YouGov’s first national poll since the announcement of the election for July 4 puts Labour in “beyond landslide territory” with a majority of 194 seats, the largest such figure in a century.

Labour would end up with 422 MPs, while the Tories would lose more than three in five of their current seats, dropping from 365 to 140.

But the party would retain both the North Herefordshire seat – which includes Upton Bishiop, Fownhope and King’s Caple – held by Sir Bill Wiggin, and Hereford & South Herefordshire – which includes Ross-on-Wye and Goodrich – held by Jesse Norman, YouGov’s projection shows.

Its forecast results for the two are:

The figures show Labour making a slight advance since a similar poll two months ago.

YouGov says this now makes Hereford and South Herefordshire “a toss-up” – one of 131 seats where the winning party’s forecast lead is fewer than five points.

Using a technique called multi-level regression and post-stratification or MRP, the poll modelled recent responses from 53,334 adults in England and Wales, and 5,541 in Scotland.

The Greens have said such national polls extrapolated to local areas fail to pick up the strength of campaigning and other local factors, and maintain their candidate Ellie Chowns is at near-parity with Sir Bill Wiggin in North Herefordshire, a target seat for the party.

YouGov meanwhile predicts Reform UK will “perform strongly in a number of seats but [is] still a long way off winning in any”.