Yahoo Finance Pound recovers after Theresa May's weekend election poll recovery
The pound has recouped some of its steep recent losses thanks to a series of election polls all putting Prime Minister Theresa May on course for election victory.
Sterling was hammered last week with its biggest weekly decline since November as opinion polls appeared to be less optimistic about the Conservatives after a tough week for the party.
The pound fell by 2 cents against the dollar on Friday as the party continued to wrestle with its controversial plans for social care which have been dubbed by critics as a “dementia tax” because they ask pensioners to contribute more to their care.
But a total of six opinion polls over the weekend have all put the Conservatives in the lead over main rivals Labour, with the gap between the parties ranging from 6 points in the ORB poll and 14 points in the ICM poll.
All of these margins are wider than Friday’s YouGov poll, which put the gap between the two parties at just 5 points. It was this poll which caused particularly steep drop in sterling. The UK currency has now though gained one cent against the dollar to hit $1.28 and is marginally up against the euro at €1.148 at the time of writing.
The weekend polls give the Conservatives an average of a 10 point lead, which according to the Electoral Calculus model, would translate into a majority of 81 seats.
This has fallen sharply from an expected 161 majority which was predicted less than a month ago, which is why broker RBC Capital Markets said it would “retain a negative bias” on sterling in the run-up to the election.
