Is Kemi Badenoch still in the lead?

Welcome to the 129th edition of The Week in Polls (TWIP), which returns to the Conservative Party’s leadership contest and what the polls tell us about members and the public.

Then it’s a summary of the latest national voting intention polls and a round-up of party leader ratings, followed by, for paid-for subscribers, 10 insights from the last week’s polling and analysis. (If you’re a free subscriber, sign up for a free trial here to see what you’re missing.)

But first a note regarding the debate over the accuracy of polls at the 2024 general election. Jane Green, president of the British Polling Council (BPC), reports on their general election polling post-mortem plans: “BPC members are conducting analysis into the 2024 miss on Labour-Conservative support. As these become available, we are collating them on the BPC website, so that this process, and some preliminary conclusions, can be seen by anyone interested. An event in 2025 will follow.”

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Who is the frontrunner with members?

Back in late August I looked at the polling data to ask whether Kemi Badenoch was leading among Conservative members in her party’s leadership contest. The conclusion then was,

With a reputable poll and a reputable survey both saying yes, along with a survey of unknown quality putting her tied up front, that is enough to outweigh a reputable poll saying no. So yes, probably.

That was a long time ago in leadership election land, so is that still the case? Or has someone else moved up into first place among Conservative members?

We have two new pieces of data, a proper poll of Conservative members from YouGov and also a survey from ConservativeHome which, although not a proper poll, comes with a decent pedigree from previous contests.

YouGov has Badenoch in first place:

Compared with its August poll, which had more candidates named, Badenoch is +3, Jenrick +12, Cleverly +2 and Tugendhat +/-0.

Note though that polling finished on the first day of the Conservative conference, a conference in which James Cleverly is largely seen to have done best.

As for ConHome:

Also pre-conference, the picture here is similar. Badenoch is still in the lead, Jenrick has been rising sharply and the fieldwork predates Cleverly’s conference performance. Tom Tugendhat is left as the one for whom it is hard to find good news in all this.

And what about the public?

I have not covered much polling of voters in general about the leadership candidates as I am usually sceptical of its value. Such polling often really reflects current name recognition levels rather than revealing that much about how the new leader will end up being viewed by the public.

But the polling of the public can influence who MPs and party members support (and remember how Sunak’s lead over Truss on this measure fell away during their own leadership race), and this far into a leadership contest such polling does start to be more useful.

So let’s check-in with the pollsters, starting with Opinium and 2019 Conservatives:

The headline results are simple: all candidates have a net positive score on acceptability, although some candidates have better scores than others. Amongst 2019 Conservative voters:

• Robert Jenrick has a net acceptability score of +19 (36% acceptable vs 17% unacceptable as leader)

• Tom Tugendhat has a net acceptability score of +15 (35% acceptable vs 20% unacceptable as leader)

• James Cleverly has a net acceptability score of +14 (38% acceptable vs 24% unacceptable as leader)

• Kemi Badenoch has a net acceptability score of +5 (32% acceptable vs 27% unacceptable as leader)

In summary, while the various contenders have relatively similar levels of acceptability, some will be surprised by the narrower score for Kemi Badenoch.

We also have Opinium data on who people think should become leader:

Again the data is not great for Badenoch as, although none of the candidates come out well, both Cleverly and Jenrick can at least claim momentum taking them ahead of her.

Then we have Techne with polling of the public overall:

Once again, these figures are not great for Kemi Badenoch, who far from looking like a front runner comes third of the four candidates with the public.

Ipsos’s figures for net favourability with the public come out at Tugendhat -13, Cleverly -16, Jenrick -16 and Badenoch -18. Again, not good for Badenoch. Especially as she is joint bottom with Ipsos in head-to-heads with Starmer for best PM.

That therefore adds to the picture that while she was the frontrunner, Kemi Badenoch’s campaign and her popularity have been stumbling. We will have to see whether that is sufficient to stop her winning. But her losing does now seem more likely than before.

Of course, the crucial next stage is a vote among Conservative MPs. Judging support among MPs is a matter of political journalism, not psephology. So I will leave that to others.

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Voting intentions and leadership ratings

Here are the latest national general election voting intention polls, sorted by fieldwork dates:

Next, a summary of the the leadership ratings, sorted by name of pollster:

For more details, and updates as each new poll comes out, see my regularly updated tables here and follow The Week in Polls on Bluesky.

For the historic figures, including Parliamentary by-election polls, see PollBase.

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Last week’s edition

Reform voters are the big outliers on immigration.

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Conservative to Reform switchers were more economically left wing than Conservative loyalists, and other polling news

The following 10 findings from the most recent polls and analysis are for paying subscribers only, but you can sign up for a free trial to read them straight away.