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Theresa May could be on course to lose seats in the General Election and the UK faces a hung parliament, according to a shock new poll.

The seat-by-seat projection for The Times by YouGov predicts that the Conservative Party could lose 20 seats and see its majority wiped out, while Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour may gain 28 seats.

The controversial analysis, released late on Tuesday, is based on a complex model and suggests Mrs May's gamble of calling a snap election in the hope of a landslide win could backfire spectacularly.

YouGov's analysis puts the Tories on 310 seats, down from the 330 they went into the election with, and 16 short of a majority.

Labour would get 257 seats, up from 229, the Liberal Democrats 10, up from the nine Tim Farron's party held when the election was called, the SNP 50, the Greens one and Plaid Cymru three.

The results of the new poll come after the Labour leader was hailed for a down to earth interview on The One Show on Tuesday evening.

Mr Corbyn appeared to recover from a blundering interview on BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour in the morning in which he repeatedly failed to answer the cost of his flagship childcare pledge.

His chat on The One Show sofa was warmly received by viewers who commended him for his "genuine and funny" approach.

Mrs May had launched a scathing attack on Mr Corbyn during a speech after his radio blunder in which she said he would be "naked and alone" in the Brexit negotiating chamber.

The YouGov figures are from the polling model’s central estimate, which acknowledges a large range of variation but it predicts that even a good night for the Conservatives would give them only 15 more seats than Mrs May now has and well short of the majority she would have hoped to secure.

A bad night could see the Conservatives plummet to 274 seats.

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).

The pollster's MRP model is based on the fact that people with similar characteristics tend to vote similarly, but not identically, regardless of where they live.

During the EU referendum campaign it consistently showed that more voters favoured Leave than Remain.

But YouGov acknowledged that models could not produce estimates as accurate as a full-scale poll in each constituency.

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."

The latest polls by ICM and Survation both suggest the Conservatives are still way ahead.