The respected Conservative Home website has released what may be the final proper poll of the ongoing Tory leadership election, reveals Robert Jenrick’s support dwindling.
It found that when polling Conservative members about who they want to be the next party leader, despite the race dragging on for so many weeks, almost no one has changed their mind.
The poll of over 800 verified party members found that Kemi Badenoch is on 55%, with Mr Jenrick trailing behind on 31%, and 14% members yet to make up their minds.
This means that, when compared to another poll the site conducted on September 3, Ms Badenoch and Mr Jenrick have broadly remained identical in their levels of support.
At the time Ms Badenoch had 51% support, to Mr Jenrick’s 34%.
This largely explains why, when asked, Tory members also criticised the length of the leadership election timetable.
Asked ‘which of the following statements is closest to your view’, 49% agreed that the contest “is too long and should have concluded at or before Conservative Party Conference”.
While 45% of members said they supported the lengthy timetable, this is significantly down from July when the concluding date was first announced.
At the start of the contest, members were largely supportive of the contest ‘going long’, while just one in three members opposed it as dragging on too late into the year.
Just 2% of Tory members believe the election should have gone on even longer until December or the new year.
Yesterday afternoon a journalist claimed that the Badenoch campaign were “slightly concerned at a possible narrowing in the race”, which may have been revealed by this morning’s Conservative Home poll.
They were quickly mocked by members of staff at ConservativeHome, who at the time were yet to see the results of the poll themselves.
Writing this morning, the site’s Henry Hill said: “Perhaps, as some very excitable people suggested on Twitter (‘X’), ConHome towers had been hacked. Or maybe it was just expectation management. Either way, nobody had seen the numbers.”
“The actual result? Well, and entirely in keeping with the theme of this leadership contest (be very long but have nothing change), we’re roughly where we started.”
“Absent the noise created by the other candidates, the picture is essentially one of stasis: with the fleeting exception of the ‘Jenrick spring’ ahead of conference, when he cut Badenoch’s lead to just 13 points, she has been more or less 20 points ahead throughout. The seven-point increase isn’t nothing, but it’s nothing especially dramatic.”