A poll has predicted that if a general election was held tomorrow, the Wells constituency would be won by the Liberal Democrats.

YouGov has conducted a poll of voting intentions within the 'Conservative Celtic fringe' – a collection of 41 seats in the south west which were won by the Conservative Party at or before the 2015 general election and subsequently voted 'leave' in the 2016 Brexit referendum.

The poll's findings indicate that Taunton Deane and Wells could both change hands to the Liberal Democrats (who held both seats before 2015), while others could be strongly at risk of turning orange in the future.

This comes after the Lib Dems' historic victory in the Tiverton and Honiton by-election, where the party overturned a majority in excess of 24,000 to win a seat held by the Conservatives since its creation in 1997.

Seats Which Could Change Hands In The Conservative Celtic Fringe. CREDIT: YouGov.

At the 2010 general election, the Lib Dems held 12 seats in the west country and four of the five seats within the Somerset County Council area – with only Bridgwater and West Somerset being held by the Tories.

Even in the seats which the Lib Dems did not hold, they were regularly polling a close second with around 30 per cent of the vote in 'Celtic fringe' areas.

This changed drastically in 2015, with all five Somerset seats going to the Conservatives at the expense of figures like former minister David Laws (Yeovil) and current county councillor Tessa Munt (Wells).

As of 2022, the only Lib Dem in the entire south west is Wera Hobhouse in Bath – an area which voted 'remain' in 2016.

Unlike the fabled 'blue wall' seats in the south-east (such as Chesham and Amersham, where the Lib Dems won a by-election in June 2021), the 'Celtic fringe' has an older average age than the UK as a whole and a far larger than average proportion of agricultural workers.

A spokesman for YouGov said: "Despite looking and sounding like exactly the sort of constituencies and voters that the Conservatives ought to be able to bank on as part of their voter coalition, rumblings in the Conservative Celtic fringe threaten to open up a whole new front in Boris Johnson's quest to win the next election."

YouGov's research suggests that, if an election were called today (June 27), the Conservatives would lose 11 seats within the 'Celtic fringe', with a further four being at high risk of being lost.

A poll of more than 800 voters within the 'Celtic fringe' found that the proportion of people intending to vote Conservative had fallen from 57 per cent at the 2019 general election to 38 per cent – a drop of 19 percentage points.

Both Labour and the Lib Dems have benefited from this, sharing their shares of the vote rise from both being on 19 per cent in 2019 to 24 per cent and 22 per cent respectively.

Of the 11 seats which YouGov expects to fall on the basis of these figures, six would go to Labour – including both Bournemouth seats in Dorset and Camborne and Redruth in Cornwall, unseating environment secretary George Eustice MP in the latter.

The Lib Dems would pick up four – Wells and Taunton Deane in Somerset, Chippenham in Wiltshire and St. Ives in Cornwall.

Interestingly, the party is not predicted to win back Somerton and Frome, where the current MP David Warburton is currently suspended from the party following allegations of sexual assault and cocaine use (allegations which he denies).

The remaining seat, East Devon, is expected to turn independent if Claire Wright stood again – having stood at the last three general elections (2015, 2017 and 2019) and increased her share of the vote each time.

Of the four 'high risk' seats, one lies within the wider Somerset area – North East Somerset, which has been held by prominent Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg since its creation in 2010.

A spokesman for YouGov added: "The scale of losses which might occur in the Conservative Celtic fringe do not come anywhere close to those in the 'red wall' in 2019.

"But if the Tory seat total takes a hit from its south-western flank at the same time as it does in the red wall former Labour heartlands and across the new blue wall front, this Labour and Lib Dem pincer movement could become very costly to the Conservatives indeed."

The next general election will have to take place on or before December 17 2024.

However, it could be called earlier following the recent repeal of the Fixed Term Parliaments Act, which required a two-thirds majority in the House of Commons for an election to be called less than five years.