And do they share the same assessment as the wider public?
Today will see Conservative MPs vote to eliminate a further candidate in the party’s ongoing leadership election. Following the Conservatives’ worst ever electoral performance, the leadership contest serves as a period of introspection for the party membership and MPs, as they digest the lessons of their defeat and choose a leader to reverse their fortunes.
So why do Conservative members think the party lost in July? A YouGov survey of 910 Tory members conducted in mid-August sheds a light on where members’ minds are.
We asked party members to say, in their own words, what they thought the main or biggest reason for the election loss was. These answers were then grouped into categories by YouGov’s AI-powered topic model.
Topping the list is the belief that disunity was the primary cause of the election defeat, with one in six (16%) saying in some form that infighting and dissension was what put them out of power.
The second most common main reason, at 12%, is that the Tories’ failure to tackle migration. Potentially connected is the sense that 10% of Tory members have that the failure to deliver on their promises and key issues lost them the votes they needed to stay in office – the third most common diagnosis for the Tory defeat.
However, when we asked the British public, we hear a different story. The most common belief among the wider population, at 14%, is that the Tories had been in power for too long and that people wanted a change. This belief is shared by 15% of those who voted for the the Conservatives in July – once again being the most common assessment – but only ranks fourth among Tory party members, at 7%.
Second on the public’s list was that the Tories had left the country in a mess and weren’t fit to be in charge, at 12%, while in third place was the sense that the Tories are "liars", "useless" and/or "corrupt" (9%).
Few among the public share the Tory membership’s most common view that infighting is what brought the Conservatives down, at 4% (joint-sixth overall), although this rises to 9% among Conservative voters (the second-most common reason they give for the loss).
Likewise, a failure to tackle immigration – the second most widely held main reason for the loss in the minds of the membership – ranks only joint-tenth among the public, with only 3% answering in these terms. This includes an identical proportion of those who voted for the Conservatives in 2024, although this rises to 10% among Reform UK voters, among whom it is the joint most common reason given for the election result, alongside a failure of the party to keep their promises.
With this data providing some insight into where Conservative members think the problems lie for the party, separate questions on the same survey show what they think should be the strategic approach going forward. Half of members think the party should move to the right, and the same number think it should primarily try and target Reform UK voters at the next election, with four in ten going so far as to support a merger of the two parties. You can find out more about this data in our article What do Tory members think the future direction of the Conservative party should be?
See the results for Conservative party members here and the wider public here
What do you think was the main reason for the Conservative election defeat, how the party needs to change to win again, and everything else? Have your say, join the YouGov panel, and get paid to share your thoughts. Sign up here.
Photo: Getty
