Robert Jenrick is the preferred alternative of party members, although half would support a merger with Reform UK
Conservative members will have hoped that their party’s record defeat in last year’s general election was their nadir. Indeed, this time last year, 56% were optimistic that their new leader would probably be the UK’s next prime minister.
But this is increasingly looking unlikely. 2025 has been a year of poor polls and record local election losses for the Tories, while YouGov’s latest MRP projected they would win just 45 seats were an election held tomorrow, with only 11% of the public currently seeing the party as ready for a return to power.
Despite only being Kemi Badenoch’s first conference as party leader, there is already open discussion within the party of replacing her as soon as she can be challenged.
If this happens, it will likely be the party membership who have the final say; new YouGov polling of 652 Conservative members reveals how they feel about the state of their party.
What do Conservative members think of Kemi Badenoch?
Among the party membership, outright dislike of Badenoch is in the minority, but it’s not insignificant. Three in ten members (29%) view Badenoch unfavourably, even if 70% see her in a positive light, while 37% of members believe she is doing a bad job as party leader, compared to 61% believing she’s doing a good job.
And when it comes to the big question of whether Badenoch should lead the Tories into the next general election, party members are near evenly split: 50% believing that Badenoch should not lead the Conservatives at the ballot box, relative to 46% who feel she should be the party’s prime ministerial candidate in 2029.
Even among those who voted for her to be party leader last year, 30% believe Badenoch should be replaced as party leader by the next general election.
Whether it will happen is a different question, with the membership split 47% to 49% over whether it is likely or unlikely that Badenoch is still leader at the time of the next general election.
But were Badenoch to step down in the next few months, Robert Jenrick – Badenoch's rival at the 2024 leadership election – would be the favourite of the membership to succeed her, with 37% saying he’d be their top choice, ahead of 22% who would most like to see a return of former prime minister Boris Johnson and 20% who would favour shadow housing secretary James Cleverly.
In head-to-heads, which better reflect the final round of Conservative leadership elections, Jenrick beats these opponents by clear margins. Tory members say they would favour him for the leadership over shadow foreign secretary Priti Patel by 68% to 16%, over Cleverly by 55% to 33%, and over Johnson by 52% to 39%.
However, a hypothetical rematch against Badenoch herself would be a tighter affair (46% to 39%), even if a quarter of 2024 Badenoch voters (24%) say they would now choose Jenrick.
Indeed, Jenrick is not much more popular than Kemi Badenoch among the Conservative membership, with 73% having a favourable opinion of the shadow justice secretary and 20% having an unfavourable opinion of him.
Significant minorities of Conservative members have unfavourable views of many senior figures within the party, with 26% having a negative opinion of James Cleverly, 31% of former chancellor Jeremy Hunt and 39% of Priti Patel, though in all three cases 60-70% have favourable opinions of these party bigwigs.
This discontent extends to former party leaders, with a third of members (32%) seeing Rishi Sunak unfavourably, 38% seeing Boris Johnson in a negative light, and two thirds (65%) having an unfavourable opinion of Liz Truss.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage proves to be popular – if divisive – among Tory members, with 53% having a favourable opinion of the Eurosceptic stalwart and 45% having an unfavourable opinion of him.
Indeed, a not-insignificant number of Conservative members would happily have Farage as party leader. In a binary choice between Badenoch and Farage, a third of Tory members (34%) would choose the latter. This rises to nearly half of 2024 Jenrick voters (46%), though a quarter of 2024 Badenoch backers (26%) would also favour the Reform UK leader.
How do Conservative members see the future of the party?
At the core of concerns about Badenoch’s leadership is a worry that the recent success of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, who would likely win a general election were it held tomorrow, poses a threat to the long-term existence of the Conservatives.
A fifth of Conservative members (20%) now believe the best the party could realistically hope for in a future election is winning enough seats to finish third, while a further 6% believe not being completely wiped out is the upper bound of plausible results for the party.
A third of members (34%) see remaining the second largest party as the most they could hope for in 2029, with just 35% believing that being the largest party is a realistic result for the Conservatives at the next election.
Nonetheless, relatively few think it’s plausible to suggest the party will be completely wiped out, with only 9% of members feeling the Conservatives will fade from politics and no longer be a major force in a decades’ time, relative to 88% expecting the party to still be an important part of British politics for at least the next 10 years.
Tory members are more divided on the longevity of Reform UK, with 55% believe the party is here to stay for at least the next 10 years, while 39% believe Nigel Farage’s party will have faded from politics by then. Conservative members expect the same of the Lib Dems by a similar margin (52% to 38%).
In the meantime, though, Reform UK does undoubtedly pose a threat to the Conservatives’ ability to win seats. One proposed solution has been electoral pacts between the two parties, though these have been ruled out by Kemi Badenoch, while Robert Jenrick has said they are “not a priority”.
However, by 64% to 31%, Conservative members would support the Conservatives and Reform UK forming an electoral pact at the next general election to not stand candidates against each other in their target seats.
A full merger, where the two would become a single party, is less popular, splitting the membership 46% in favour to 48% opposed. This is not fully a particularly recent development, with 42% of members backing a merger last August.
Regardless of whether they agree an electoral pact, it is possible that the next election could result in a hung parliament, potentially requiring a coalition government to be formed. In such a circumstance, nearly three quarters of Conservative members (72-73%) would support a full coalition between them and Reform UK, with it making little difference whether it was the Tories or Reform UK who were the larger party.
This compares to only 25-30% supporting another coalition between the Conservatives and Lib Dems in the event of a hung parliament, and just 6-9% approving of a ‘grand coalition’ with Labour.
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