In his latest column, PopCon Director, Mark Littlewood, looks at a strategy Conservatives ought to adopt to win the next general election. 

A sobering opinion poll this week showed the scale of the task facing Kemi Badenoch. Only 24% of the electorate have a favourable opinion of the Conservative Party whereas fully 66% have an unfavourable opinion (SEE HERE).

On the face of it, to win the next election, the Conservatives don’t just need to win over the undecideds but a fair chunk of voters who currently express some degree of hostility to the party.

While a couple of opinion polls now show a lead over this rapidly unravelling Labour government, getting back up to the levels of support that secured victory at the polls in 2019 seems like a very steep climb. Getting back into power if two thirds of voters have an unfavourable view of you looks like an impossible task.

However, I don’t think we should worry too much about “net favourability” ratings.

Look again at the numbers for each political party and you might conclude that the next election will be a closely fought battle between the Liberal Democrats and the Greens, with Labour, the Conservatives and Reform merely making up the numbers. 

The problem with these sorts of polls, is they don’t measure intensity of feeling. A good swathe of voters might have warm feelings towards the LibDems and the Greens, but typically not sufficiently warm to actually take the step of voting for them.

Similarly, for the two main parties there are likely to be a good chunk of people who vote one way, without any real enthusiasm, just to “stop the other lot getting in.” Even with our diminished tally in the July election, my sense was a lot of disgruntled voters with an unfavourable view of the government still finally decided to put their cross in the blue box.

Take a look over the pond and Donald Trump’s success was not based on having more people like him than dislike him (SEE HERE). His net favourability rating has typically been around -10%, but he still secured a majority of the vote and a comfortable win in the electoral college.

What Trump had was a substantial base of unwavering, even fanatical, support. Not of itself enough to secure him the Presidency, but enough to put him within touching distance. Pile on top of that a slice of rather ambivalent voters who didn’t much like either candidate but preferred him (or at least his policies) over Harris and hey presto, you’re the 47th President. 

To get back into office, the Conservatives should pursue a similar strategy. If only 1 in 5 voters were firmly in the Tory column, this is a decent platform from which to win an election. Indeed, Labour won their landslide without the support of 4 in 5 of the electorate.

All to play for so keep the flag of freedom flying.