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LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May looks nine seats short of winning a majority at next week’s parliamentary election, a model from polling company YouGov estimated on Thursday, a smaller shortfall than the 16 seat gap shown a day earlier.

YouGov’s prediction model showed the Conservatives winning 317 seats, the main opposition Labour Party on 253 and other parties winning 80 seats in the 650-seat lower house of parliament.

Sterling fell sharply late on Tuesday when the Times newspaper reported the first estimate from the model, which unexpectedly showed May was 16 seats short of an outright majority of 326 seats.

Other opinion polls during the past 10 days have shown the Conservatives’ lead over Labour in terms of public support fall away, though the extent of the decline is sensitive to assumptions over how likely different age groups are to vote.

YouGov updates its model forecast daily, and said it conducted 6,858 interviews with potential voters on May 31, and a total 53,611 over the past week.