It’s been said that it would be regrettable were this election to be decided by an unweighted survey – a reference to our Conservative members’ panel which, though indeed unweighted, proved itself reliable during the last contest.
Spokesman though I am for the survey, I agree. Tory MPs and party members should choose the best candidate for the job rather than be swayed by polls (though they may be helpful by providing information about what activists think). It isn’t clear to me at the moment who this person is, though the choice is rapidly simplifying.
But is there anything in the claim in the first place? All I can say is that during the last week Penny Mordaunt’s character and record have come under sustained attack. I haven’t taken a view on either – but have wondered whether she could lead a coherent government, given her lack of support among the Party’s officer class, were she to form a Government in September.
Mordaunt’s position in the survey’s Next Leadership Question slid last weekend: she moved from top to third in the raw table, and from third to fourth in the run-offs. Yesterday, her vote in the real ballot fell by one from 83 to 82.
Mordaunt was overtaken at the top by Kemi Badenoch, who had run her a good second in the previous survey. Which suggested, since a mass of Party members are to the right of its centre, that Liz Truss had not convinced the constituency on which she is most relying for support.
And, lo and behold, Truss is only seven votes up on her second ballot performance, rising from 64 votes to 71. One way of interpreting that result is to say that she has picked up fewer of Suella Braverman’s 27 votes than she might. Another is to say that she picked up the lion’s share of them, but that there has been slippage elsewhere in her support.
Badenoch is up by nine from 49 to 58 – again, not a large number, but enough to bring her within 13 votes of the Foreign Secretary. Perhaps the survey played a hand and perhaps it didn’t. But the hard truth is, when one turns from speculation to numbers, that Conservative MPs behaved yesterday as they usually tends to do: unreadably.
Try as they might, neither the European Research Group, the One Nation Group nor anyone else can determine the votes of their members – and nor will these necessarily tell the campaign teams the truth about their intentions. We are likely to see the same pattern today when Tom Tugendhat’s votes are redistributed.
Were they to go all over the place, as many of Braverman’s seem to have done, not enough would break for Badenoch to get her ahead of Truss. Meanwhile, Mordaunt faces the challenging task of stopping the slide and picking up enough of Tugendhat’s supporters to stay ahead of Truss. Who in turn has to hold her support.
All in all, the contest that will go to the Party members looks marginally more likely to be Sunak v Mordaunt than Sunak v Truss, with Sunak v Badenoch a distinct outside possibility. You will see that I’m assuming that the former Chancellor does indeed make the membership round.
Might Team Sunak slip a few votes tomorrow to whichever candidate it believes is more beatable at that final stage? (He is over 30 votes ahead of Mordaunt, so arguably has a few to spare/) If our survey is right, that vulnerable candidate is now Mordaunt rather than Truss, though Sunak has closed the gap on her too.
I may well be placing too much emphasis on our poll, but I nevertheless wouldn’t put it past Team Sunak, whose candidate was backed by no fewer than four Chief Whips when I last looked, to try something of the kind tomorrow, whoever they target.