Results from Popular Conservatism’s third opinion panel survey show Robert Jenrick and Kemi Badenoch gaining ground as members say they want the next leader to be a true blue Tory.

In PopCon’s third survey we asked respondents about their preference for the next leader of the party and what qualities they want to see in the next Conservative leader, whoever they are.

Key findings

Robert Jenrick (38.3%) and Kemi Badenoch (30.4%) remain the panel’s front runners. Our respondents support for Robert Jenrick has consistently increased (from 24.2% a month ago) and although Kemi Badenoch’s support has also increased in over the last month Jenrick’s lead has grown from 0.2% two weeks ago to 7.9%.

In a head-to-head our panel support Jenrick over Badenoch by almost 3:2 (57.9%:42.1%).

Priti Patel was in a solid third place (14%) but following her elimination from the leadership race, we asked her supporters who their new preferred candidate is and they have mainly moved to Robert Jenrick (increased overall vote share +6.2%) and Kemi Badenoch (+3.8%) with insignificant upticks for James Cleverly (+0.4) and Tom Tugendhat (+0.3%).

The Conservative Party members who responded to our survey overwhelmingly want the Party to include Conservative values and beliefs written into the Party’s constitution, and for MPs to have to sign up to them (86.3%).

This follows from our last survey in August which showed an overwhelming majority of Conservative respondents (76%) had little or no confidence in Tory MPs putting the right two final candidates to the membership.

When given a list of 20 criteria for selecting the next party leader and asked to select their top five, our respondents put more importance on “being a true blue Tory” (55.3%) and undertaking reform of the party (49.7%) than having the best chance of winning the next general election (41%) whilst only 8.1% thought that being the candidate most likely to unite MPs was important.

Mark Littlewood, Director of Popular Conservatism, said:

“Robert Jenrick and Kemi Badenoch appear to be the favourites of the party faithful. However, any successful candidate will need to heed the demands of the grassroots members. They want to see major reform of the party structures and an unambiguously conservative policy platform. Whoever puts forward the most credible offerings in these two areas is likely to become the next party leader."

ENDS

The survey was undertaken between 28th August and 2nd September 2024. Additional survey work 4th/5th September 2024 for selected group.

Follow this link for tabulated results.