Why were the Conservatives such bad losers? What next?
With the Conservative Party Conference about to start in Birmingham, our founder and MD Tom Lees reflects on why the party lost and the key questions they need to answer.
The July General Election was seriously bad for the Conservatives with the party losing 251 seats and their vote share falling by 20 percentage points. This was the worst result for the party in its history.
For many, the election feels like old news. But it is very much the topic-de-jour for the Conservative party as it heads into its first party conference in opposition for 15 years.
With only 121 MPs, a much-reduced business attendance (few want to splash serious cash on the Conservatives when they are at least 5 years away from power?) and a party that clearly ran aground after so many years in power this trip to Birmingham will be quite different.
What is not different, of course, is that once again - for the fifth time in eight years - the Conservatives are on the lookout for a new leader.
The spectacular size of the Labour majority should give the party 10 years in power. But given that Sir Keir managed to reverse the significant 2019 win of Boris Johnson in just four years the Conservatives will have hope that they can do the same.
For any close observers of politics, it is clear that voter loyalty - and hence constituencies - have become much more febrile and turbulent. Of the 650 constituencies, 255 (40%) now have majorities of less than 5000.
Why did the Conservatives lose?
Each wing of the Conservative Party and each candidate will seek to advance an argument of why the party lost which works to their advantage.
Being clear on the problem is crucial to working out the solution (in the form of a new leader).
We undertook private polling research just after the General Election to better understand some of the drivers. This complements other excellent work done by various polling companies.
It is clear from our work that the Conservatives lost for four main reasons:
They were incompetent (34%)
Obsessed with infighting (16%)
They developed a reputation for sleaze (14%)
They had been in power for too long (11%)
For those who argue that the party had ‘lurched too far to the right’ or ‘too far to the left’, the party’s proposed policies were bottom of the list of reasons sighted by voters.
That doesn’t mean policy doesn’t matter of course, because policies not working or working clearly impacts how competent you come across.
The truth is that most voters don’t know about, understand or have the knowledge to evaluate policy platforms. Plus many are highly sceptical that what politicians say in Opposition is actually what they will do in government.
In the excellent book, Democracy for Realists, it is clearly (and in my view persuasively) argued that: voters don’t carefully evaluate policies or candidate qualifications; voters tend to make decisions based on their social group identities—such as race, religion, and class—rather than policy issues; group loyalty, rather than a clear understanding of political issues, is often the decisive factor in voting and that people vote for emotional and reactive factors rather than thoughtful reflection. A sense of party loyalty still clearly plays a role for a good number of people too.
So the key questions for Conservative members and MPs (who have to knock out a further two candidates after conference) looking for a route back to power is who will the public see as most competent? Who will best unite the party to stop the tedious bickering and infighting?
Picking a coalition
One of the reasons that Rishi decided to hold a surprise July election was to try and catch Nigel Farage off guard. Clearly that didn’t work.
While Reform UK only won 5 MPs, they secured a 14.3% vote share and over four million votes. As Sir John Curtice points out, this was particularly damaging for the Conservatives with the vote share of Reform rising twice as much in seats that the Conservatives were defending compared to those with Labour incumbents.
This also may be partly due to tactical voting of those wanting to get rid of the Conservatives and happy to vote for the most likely person to do so.
While some seats were also lost to the Liberal Democrats in the South West and home counties, it is clear that Reform UK was far more damaging to the Conservatives.
As YouGov analysis showed, the Conservatives saw 11 percentage points of their 2019 vote go to Reform, 5 points go to Labour and 3 points go to the Lib Dems. Put another way, Nigel Farage caused twice as much damage to the Conservatives as Sir Keir Starmer and nearly four times as much damage as Ed Davey.
Ideally, of course, the next Conservative leader would want to win back votes from Labour, the Liberal Democrats and Reform UK but this will be hard given the very different world views some of these sets of voters have. Particularly between the Liberal Democrats and Reform UK who are looking for quite different ‘vibes’ from their politicians.
Our polling shows that, in general terms, Reform UK voters are highly sceptical of the benefits of immigration and think levels are much too high. They want to keep tax levels about the same or reduced, think that equal opportunities have gone too far and do not think tackling climate change should be prioritised ahead of keeping taxes and bills low.
Our work shows that 2024 Lib Dem voters essentially think the opposite. They generally think migration is good for the UK, they think equal opportunities attempts are about right or need to go further and want tackling climate change placed high on the political agenda.
Interestingly the two areas of mutual agreement are that we need to be tougher on crime and criminals and that immigration levels are too high and need to come down.
So the final question, for Conservative members and MPs needs to be which electoral coalition are they looking to put together? The one that David Cameron assembled in 2010 and 2015 (more focussed on Lib Dems and southern seats) or the one that Boris Johnson achieved in 2019 (more appealing to Reform voters and those in the North)? You cannot have both at once.