PopCon's fourth survey reveals Conservative Party members overwhelmingly want the party to move to the right and to see internal party reform - strengthening members voting rights.

Key findings:

Robert Jenrick (38.3%) and Kemi Badenoch (34.9%) remain the panel’s front runners for leader;

In a head-to-head, our panel supports Jenrick (46%) over Badenoch (41.3%). 12.8% of respondents have yet to make up their mind; 

Almost half of our respondents believe the current Tory Party is left of centre (48%) vs under a third (32.6%) who believe it is right of centre and the vast majority (89.6%) think the next leader should "move the party somewhat or significantly to the right" (89.6%);

When asked, "Would you support or oppose the proposal to allow Conservative Party members to vote on all nominated leadership candidates, not just the final two?", 68.5% of respondents said yes; 

59.6% support creating a new role of elected deputy leader of the Conservative Party; 

71.9% think members should elect the Chairman of the Conservative Party;

When asked if the Party Chairman should be a sitting MP or could be drawn from further afield only two out of ten (21.2%) think the Party Chairman should be a parliamentarian. The remainder either think the role should definitely not be occupied by a parliamentarian (15.2%) or that the parliamentary status of the Party Chairman should be irrelevant (58.1%). 

When asked for ideas as to who might make a good Party Chairman, unprompted Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg was overwhelmingly the most popular name offered by our panellists. Dame Priti Patel, Lord Frost and Boris Johnson were also popular names put forward supporting the idea that the next Party Chairman need not necessarily be a sitting MP. 

Mark Littlewood, Director of Popular Conservatism, said:

“It is clear that the overwhelming majority of Tory members believe the party has drifted far too far to the soggy middle ground or even to the left of centre. About nine in ten want a meaningful shift back to traditional, right of centre conservative territory.

“Whichever candidate makes the clearest commitment to such a reset of the party is likely to become party leader in November. Our survey suggests Robert Jenrick is in pole position with Kemi Badenoch not far behind.”

The survey was undertaken between Wednesday 11th - Monday 16th September and completed by 505 Conservative members.

Follow this link for tabulated results.