Johnson ahead but polls say it's close

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson's Conservative Party is on course to win a parliamentary majority of 38 seats in Thursday's election, according to a new poll, the Sunday Times' political editor reports.

A Datapraxis poll, using the multilevel regression and post-stratification (MRP) model, predicted that the Conservatives would win 344 seats, with the opposition Labour Party taking 221, the Times's Tim Shipman said on Twitter.

"Their last MRP, two weeks ago gave a majority of 48," he said, adding the poll was based on 500,000 YouGov interviews using the Datapraxis model.