The pound dropped on last week after a new poll suggested Theresa May could be on course to lose the General Election and the UK faces a hung parliament.
The pound was down 0.3 percent at $1.2816 after falling as low as $1.2791 earlier, approaching a one-month low of $1.2775 touched on Friday. It also slipped to a low of 0.8738 pound per euro, near Friday’s eight-week low of 0.8750.
The news came after a string of opinion polls show a narrowing lead for Mrs May’s Conservatives, shaking the confidence among investors that she would easily win a majority in the election.
“The narrowing in the polls has clearly dented sterling’s performance and continues to weigh on the currency, and is probably likely to do so in the near term,” said Mitul Kotecha, head of Asia macro strategy for Barclays in Singapore.
YouGov’s model draws on the data collected from around 50,000 panellists quizzed on their voting intention over the course of a week and uses a recently-developed technique called multilevel regression and post-stratification (MRP).
YouGov chief executive Stephan Shakespeare said the data could change dramatically between now and June 8.
“The data suggests that there is churn on all fronts, with the Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats both likely to both lose and gain seats,” he wrote in The Times.
“Based on the model’s current estimates, some seats are likely to change hands along EU referendum dividing lines.
“This is just a snapshot based on data from the past seven days and people can and do change their minds in the closing days of a general election campaign.
“Furthermore, it would not take a slight fall in Labour’s share and a slight increase in the Conservatives’ to see Theresa May returning to No 10 with a healthy majority.”
