Tory Leadership contest 2022
- Thread starter brogdale
- Start date
This is quite remarkable
www.independent.co.uk
That's voters not members, although anecdotally this rings true.
Revealed: The leader Tory voters would prefer
Sympathy for the former prime minister despite partygate
www.independent.co.uk
That's voters not members, although anecdotally this rings true.
redsquirrel
This Machine Kills Progressives
I think that is bad reporting by the Independent, "supporters". The polling YouGov did was of members (unless there is some other poll).This is quite remarkable
Revealed: The leader Tory voters would prefer
Sympathy for the former prime minister despite partygate
That's voters not members, although anecdotally this rings true.
EDIT: 'Supporters' seems just to be a c&p from the Times itself. And it does seem to be a different survey to the one above, I think the polling was of people who voted Conservative in 2019, though it is such a badly written partisan piece that it is not clear exactly who it is referring to.
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Article
Conservative voters have “sellers’ remorse” over the ousting of Boris Johnson and would prefer him as prime minister over the two rivals vying to be his successor, focus group research and polling for The Times reveals today.
Interviews with floating voters in marginal constituencies found little enthusiasm for either Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak becoming the next Conservative leader.
This was backed up by polling that found 49 per cent of Tory supporters thought Johnson should remain prime minister — more than the combined support for both Truss and Sunak.
At the time Johnson quit most of the country believed he had to go, suggesting the Conservative Party leadership contest has triggered a change of heart. From April onwards at least half of Britons believed Johnson should resign, according to YouGov polling.
On July 5, two days before Johnson resigned, 69 per cent of the country thought he should quit, including 54 per cent of 2019 Conservative voters.
But Times research indicates that neither Truss nor Sunak have proved to the country that they can do any better.
“The others have not had to deal with everything he’s had to,” said Richard, a plumber in the marginal seat of Southampton Itchen.
“He stepped straight in and it was Brexit and then it was Covid and now it’s the war in Ukraine. Everybody waffles on about, he should have done this, he should have done that. But I’d like to see them in his shoes.”
Voters in the red wall seat of Oldham East & Saddleworth agreed. Only one of the group thought Johnson ought to be replaced, even though “you can’t deny all he’s done wrong”.
One said: “If he would have failed or succeeded, we’ll never know now. But he should have been given the opportunity.”
Even voters in the so-called blue wall seat of Esher & Walton felt he had been unfairly ousted. “I really liked Boris and I was really, really disappointed in the way he was treated,” said one swing voter. “They’re picking on minor things. You know, furnishings and wallpaper and making such a big deal about it. And it’s the media. The media are the ones that turn everyone against him.”
The Times conducted focus groups, organised by the policy research firm Public First, in three areas of the country that formed the bedrock of Johnson’s 2019 victory. The paper also commissioned YouGov to do a nationwide survey of voters to gauge attitudes towards the leadership race and the two contenders to be Britain’s next prime minister.
Both found little enthusiasm for either Truss or Sunak and a widespread belief that the Tories had badly damaged the reputation of the party by ousting Johnson before waging a bitter battle to succeed him.
Forty per cent of voters who chose the Tories in 2019 said the contest had made them think worse of the party while under a quarter were convinced of the candidates’ plans to tackle the cost of living crisis.
“Quite honestly, they all talk rubbish, because it’s like going for a job interview,” said Stacey, a buyer who works for a house building firm. “You’re going to say that you’re wonderful but when it comes down to it are any of them actually going to follow through? Because somebody needs to right now. The whole world is going crazy and a lot of people at the minute need help.”
Our panel’s verdicts
Hans, a headteacher from Esher, said he thought “Liz Truss writes the policies on the back of a fag packet and shoots from the hip”. Claire, a 55-year-old receptionist, said she had always voted Tory but was “very concerned” about both candidates.
“One of them is going to get in so all we can do is hope,” she said. When the group was asked to describe each of the candidates, Sunak was variously called “slimy”, “cringey” and a “backstabber” while Truss was characterised as “awkward”, “flitty” and “unconvincing”.
Asked in polling, given what they had seen or heard about the leadership election, who would be the best prime minister, 20 per cent said Sunak and 18 per cent Truss. However, 49 per cent said they would prefer Johnson to remain in office with 12 per cent undecided.
With two weeks to go until Johnson’s successor is announced, supporters of Sunak have accused Truss, the frontrunner, of avoiding scrutiny by planning to hold an emergency budget without independent fiscal forecasts.
Truss, meanwhile, is preparing for government with plans to scale back the Cabinet Office, the department at the centre of Whitehall.
Kwasi Kwarteng, Truss’s presumptive chancellor, promised at the weekend that “help is coming” for Britons struggling with the cost of living.
Why focus groups are so important
Late on weekday nights, scores of Westminster insiders’ secret WhatsApp groups flicker and buzz as the evening’s focus groups conclude. Returning home by train from marginal seats in places like Oldham and Southampton, market researchers tap away on their phones, giving target voters’ immediate feedback on the most recent political developments (James Frayne writes).There is an insatiable desire from political staffers for new intelligence on what ordinary voters think. How did they think the boss did on their weekend media round? What did they think about their new policy proposal? Did voters believe that new attack line on them? Focus groups are the perfect forum to answer such questions.
This desire for focus group intel has grown dramatically in recent years. Previously, many political staffers doubted their merits. Sceptics said they were “just eight guys in a room” and therefore neither representative, nor scientific.
It was Dominic Cummings’s stated reliance on them that persuaded other political consultants to take them seriously. Every campaign Cummings has been involved in for 25 years has obsessed about focus group insights. It became harder and harder to write them off, given his success.
There are three main reasons why they are so useful.
Firstly, unlike conventional polling, they give ordinary voters carte blanche to say whatever is on their minds. Polls provide people with a limited set of options to answer from; focus groups let people say whatever they want. This means focus groups throw up information and ideas that no one in Westminster had thought of.
Secondly, focus groups allow for a two-way conversation impossible to emulate with a poll. Competent moderators with a grasp of policy can get a sense for how an issue is likely to play out when it is properly scrutinised.
Thirdly, they give greater flexibility to test language that politicians might use in interviews, speeches and articles. In most groups, an ordinary voter will perfectly sum up a political argument better than the staffers and politicians ever have. Someone in such a group will have said “just get Brexit done”, and the rest is history.
The Times focus groups followed the model we run for political clients. Bringing together a group of swing voters from important marginal seats, we analysed their responses to leading politicians, their policy proposals, and their presentation and messaging. We asked broad questions to give people the chance to say whatever they wanted, while asking narrower, direct questions to find out their thoughts on specific areas of interest.
If the client had been one of the leadership campaigns, this is what I would be telling them by WhatsApp (with language suitably sanitised):
I cannot emphasise enough: almost all voters are exasperated with the trivia of the race. They do not know why you are talking about anything other than the cost of living, given many families face a total financial wipeout.
They want to know you understand their lives and care about them, and they want to know you have a specific plan to get them out of the hole they are falling into. They are tuning out most policy announcements on the economy because they feel laughable in the face of the scale of the problem.
The mood is increasingly ugly. Like 15 years ago, an “anti-politics” sentiment is surging in working-class communities particularly. Everyone thinks everything is broken and no one trusts politicians to deliver. While delivering Brexit showed voters politicians could keep promises (for better or worse), many are reverting to the feeling: “It’s all lies.” They want to hear clear, achievable policy proposals; they want competent management. Sunak has a lead on competence when the choice is forced, but suggestions he is out of touch clearly resonate.
There is an additional problem: a significant minority doubt the merits of the whole affair, believing getting rid of Johnson was a mistake. Many loathe him passionately, but many others think he did fine. And, by the way, ask who they would sooner have a drink with — Rishi, Liz, or Boris — and it is not even a question.
Apologies for the bleak assessment but, if anything, I have underplayed the scale of your problem.
James Frayne is a founding partner of Public First
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ruffneck23
front left
So many threads this could go in....
not-bono-ever
meh
All scum
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
bemused
Well-Known Member
Watching them flap about boat crossing today. So I seen them blame: 'the European definition of asylum (whatever the hell that is), the French, the EU, the UN, the basic principle if you see someone downing you help them and lefty lawyers. Everyone in fact but them. The government has over 100,000 outstanding claims, if they cleared them as fast as dodgy PPE contract they've have deported everyone will an invalid claim and released thousands of people who walked thousands of miles to get here into the workforce.
Rob Ray
Weight is meaningless
Another battle showcasing how far we done fallen. A measure which was originally taken by politicians just clever enough to realise they needed a way to dilute blame for economic crashes, being debated between a candidate who's just bright enough to continue doing so but not bright enough to beat his opponent, and a candidate so arrogant she doesn't even realise how stupid she is for suggesting taking that power back directly before an economic crash hits.
I still can't believe how long this process has been. And it's still ongoing. Surely everyone has switched off by now? Even the truly fascinated must've got bored a couple of months ago. It's often said time speeds up as you age, so perhaps we should thank the Tories for showing that once in a blue moon, it still slows down.
Artaxerxes
Look out, he's got a gnu!
Its the fucking depressing nature of the way they suck up airtime and news articles with this shit. 99% of the UK have no input into this "race" but we keep having to hear the same dull speeches about Woke and Workers Not Grafting spouted out by them.
Rob Ray
Weight is meaningless
Not in comfortable Tory membership land - all other topics (cost of living crisis/inflation, disease, climate crisis, trade, food shortages, water shortages, energy shortages, personnel crises in health, education, firefighting, transport etc) aren't to be looked at. Wokeness, immigration and sky high taxes are where it's at. And maybe war as long as it's through the lens of brave Britain leading Europe against the Russkies.
Kevbad the Bad
Amiable Bowel Syndrome
I'm surprised no-one's ever pushed the button before. Still, we're free of the EU yoke now. We can do as we see fit.
Karl Masks
Birds Angel Delight
It's like the Cunt Olympics on the Harrowing Channel
SpookyFrank
A cheap source of teeth for aquarium gravel
ska invita
back on the other side
week after week of having no virtues signalling
Puddy_Tat
naturally fluffy
there ought to be a phrase for the opposite of virtue signalling that tories go in for...
SysOut
¯¯¯
True Blue Tory signalling.
The Tories don't believe in virtue - they believe in the worst of human nature - greed and callousness.
edited2add: e.g. they support killing animals for fun.
Humberto
Callooh! Callay!
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