The former business and trade secretary has an early lead, on 24% of the vote, but the field remains open
With approximately seven weeks to go until the Tory membership are given the chance to vote for the party’s next leader, a new YouGov survey of 910 Conservative members shows Kemi Badenoch is the current frontrunner.
While Badenoch enjoys pole position with 24% of the vote, there is some encouragement for other leadership candidates, too.
When asked which of the list of six contenders they thought should take over, Tom Tugendhat comes second on 16% of the vote, followed by James Cleverly on 14%, Robert Jenrick on 12%, Priti Patel on 11%, and Mel Stride on 2%.
Around one-in-five (19%) were still undecided at the time of our poll, conducted from 6-15 August.
Of course, the membership will not get to choose between the full list of candidates, but rather two final candidates who will be selected by MPs over the coming weeks in a ‘whittling down’ process.
Therefore we also simulated a selection of potential head-to-heads and put them before random subsamples of members to establish who would perform best in a range of prospective matchups.
The results are again good news for Badenoch, who wins in all five of her head-to-heads, including beating Tom Tugendhat by 18 points (49%-31%), Robert Jenrick by 15 points (48%-33%), and appears also to be ahead of James Cleverly at this stage in the contest (43%-34%).
Jenrick wins two of the four matchups we conducted that included him – versus Mel Stride (50%-15%) and Priti Patel (50%-29%) – and he also effectively ties with Tom Tugendhat (38%-36%).
Elsewhere, our final matchup shows James Cleverly beating Priti Patel (51%-36%).
It is important to note that these are early days in the contest, and much can change. YouGov will check in on Conservative party members and what they think of the leadership candidates as the campaign develops.
What do you think about Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leadership contest, and everything else? Have your say, join the YouGov panel, and get paid to share your thoughts. Sign up here.
Photo: Getty
