There’s an oddly upbeat mood here at Tory party conference in Birmingham. You might have thought that with just 121 MPs left, the Conservatives would be fairly despondent about their future. But it seems that the bromide of the leadership election has helped assuage such feelings. After all, who can be miserable when there are endless invites to rallies and much merchandise to be purloined?
Yet Mr S has a big bucket of cold water to douse on Tories rousing from their conference hangovers this morning. Savanta has done some polling for The Spectator and it looks like the future of the party is not looking too peachy. A majority of young former Conservative voters say they won’t vote for the Conservatives at next election, with 56 per cent saying they cannot see themselves returning by 2029. A sub-optimal development where one in six voters are expected to be dead by then…
Savanta’s research of over 7,500 UK adults split under-45 Conservatives into two main groups: ‘defectors’ and ‘considerers’. ‘Defectors’ are those that did not vote Conservative in 2024, but did in 2019. Just shy of half of these (45 per cent) that voted in 2024 switched to Labour with one third (31 per cent) going to Reform. ‘Considerers’ are those who did not vote Tory in 2019 or 2024 but would consider doing so in the future. Nearly half (48 per cent) that voted in 2024 went to Labour with one in six (17 per cent) backing Ed Davey’s Liberal Democrats.
How best to win them back? One in five (21 per cent) young former Conservative voters say they will never vote Conservative again. Just three in ten (28 per cent) ‘defectors’ can see themselves backing the party at the next election, while a third (35 per cent) say they can see themselves voting Conservative in the future, just not at the next election. Tom Tugendhat (-6) is narrowly the most popular leadership candidate among younger former Conservative voters, ahead of Kemi Badenoch (-8) and James Cleverly (-9) and Robert Jenrick (-9). At least he’s leading somewhere…
Food for thought perhaps as Tory members eagerly prepare to vote on the final two…
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