– This is the script of CNBC's news report for China's CCTV on May 31, Wednesday.
Welcome to CNBC Business Daily, I'm Qian Chen.
U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May's Conservative Party risks falling short of winning an overall majority of seats in parliament in a national election on June 8, The Times newspaper said on Tuesday, quoting research by polling firm YouGov.
In contrast to signs from a string of opinion polls that have suggested May's Conservatives will increase their majority, the new constituency-by-constituency modelling by YouGov showed it might lose 20 of the 330 seats it holds and the opposition Labour Party could gain nearly 30 seats.
That could leave the Conservatives 16 seats short of the overall majority of 326 needed to govern without the support of other parties.
May's decision of an early election represents a sharp backtrack from her position until now, which had been that holding an election before 2020 would be an unnecessary distraction from the monumental task of successfully navigating an exit for the U.K. from the European Union.
[Conrad Saldanha, Neuberger Berman, Porfolio Manager] "It's gonna be about the Brexit negotiations, its gonna be a hard Brexit or its gonna be a soft Brexit. So a lot of these politics surrounding that is automatically what type of Brexit its gonna be and thats gonna take an impact on the economy but also be much more reflected lifetime with the way pound trades."
The British pound fell against the greenback after the report.
The polling model was based on 50,000 interviews conducted over a week.
But YouGov firm acknowledged that its predictions were controversial and that they suggested big swings in the usual voting patterns for many Britons.
CNBC's Qian Chen, reporting from Singapore.