Roundup: Britain's Corbyn on target for landslide victory in Labour leadership battle: poll

The leader of Britain's main opposition Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, is on target to beat a challenge for his job from one if his own members of parliament(MPs).

The first significant poll for more than a month revealed Wednesday that left-wing politician Corbyn looks set to be easily returned as Labour leader in just over three weeks.

A new survey of Labour Party votes by YouGov has found 57 percent intend to vote for Corbyn, more than 22 percentage points ahead of his challenger, the Welsh MP Owen Smith.

Smith won 35 percent while a further eight percent of Labour members are still undecided.

YouGov analysts said stripping out the "don't knows" gives Corbyn a 24 point lead of 62 percent to Smith's 38 percent.

More than 600,000 members of the Labour Party are currently voting on whether Corbyn should stay in the party's top job or be replaced by Smith.

The party was plunged into a civil war after the recent European Union referendum when 172 Labour MPs in the House of Commons backed a vote of no confidence in their leader, while most of his front bench Shadow Cabinet team resigned, leaving many of his key jobs unfilled.

The results of the poll, commissioned for Wednesday's Times newspaper, shows Corbyn's popularity has grown since his landslide victory last September when he confounded political analysts by winning the race to succeed Ed Miliband as leader of the so-called political party of Britain's working classes.

In that poll Corbyn received 59 percent of the vote, winning around 250,000 votes, way ahead of runner-up Andy Burnham who received 80,000 votes.

Opponents of Corbyn have been depending on a victory for Smith who is standing on a platform of re-uniting the party in what is its biggest ever crisis.

YouGov found Corbyn has majority support among all three groups of people eligible to vote in the leadership contest.

"Despite the Labour NEC's decision to prevent members who had not been in the party for six months from voting, Corbyn is still the preferred choice of 52 percent of full members," said YouGov.

"Likewise, the 25 pounds (32.84 U.S. dollars) asking price to join as a registered supporter, allegedly designed to skew the contest in favor of Smith, has backfired, with 70 percent of registered supporters saying they will back Corbyn. Just over half (54 percent) of trade union affiliates also say they intend to vote for the current leader."

More than half of those polled want to see Corbyn lead Labour into the next election with genuine optimism that he can lead the party to victory.

YouGov say there are a number of caveats, including the fact members still have three weeks to vote ahead of the announcement of the winner in Liverpool on September 24. This includes unforeseen events affecting the result.

The pollsters add there is a strong feeling among those quizzed that a party split is imminent, with 39 percent thinking a split after the leadership election is either very or fairly likely.

"Nevertheless, Team Corbyn will be pleased by the security afforded by the double digit lead they are currently sitting on," concluded YouGov. Enditem