Why did the Conservatives Lose the Election?

As the contest to replace Rishi Sunak as Leader of the Conservative Party gets underway, the candidates for the job would do worse than assess the findings of an Ipsos poll this week.

Those questioned were asked which were the most important reasons why the Conservatives lost the general election.

Top of the list was the 51% who cited poor delivery on the NHS, followed by 50% saying too many scandals involving the Conservative Party, 46% saying the party was not trustworthy and the same proportion saying the party was out of touch with what ordinary people wanted.

44% said they felt the party was “incompetent” with 43% citing poor delivering in helping to tackle the cost-of-living crisis, the same proportion who cited generally the fact that the country was just ready for a change in government.

41% said poor delivery on immigration was one of the most important reasons why the Conservatives lost, with the same proportion again citing Liz Truss’s time as Prime Minister.

Ipsos goes on to note: “However, the public were split on the key reasons for the Conservative party’s defeat based on how they voted at the recent General Election. For those that stayed with the Conservative Party, 53% blamed Liz Truss’ time as Prime Minister, followed by poor delivery on immigration (49%), and too many scandals (47%). Reform UK voters overwhelmingly said poor delivery on immigration was the key reason for the Conservatives' defeat (70%).

“For those voting Labour, a range of issues were mentioned by half or more, but the number one issue cited was poor delivery on the NHS (63%). This was followed by scandals (54%), not being trustworthy (54%) and poor delivery on the cost of living (53%). For Lib Dem voters, around 6 in 10 talked about scandals (64%), being out of touch (60%), poor delivery on the NHS (59%) and not being trustworthy (59%).”

Those questioned were also asked who they thought would do a good or bad job as Conservative Party leader.

Depressingly amongst the declared candidates, the current leader of Reform UK, Nigel Farage is the most likely to be seen as someone that would do a good job (28%). However, almost half of the public think he would do a bad job (48%).

For the public as a whole, many of the mooted candidates were not well known with Ipsos finding that just three candidates have half or more Britons offering an opinion one way or another.

Ipsos Director of Politics Keiran Pedley said of the findings: “Whoever the new Conservative Party leader is, they will need to diagnose why the party lost the recent General Election and come up with a plan for how to respond. However, these findings show there is no clear public consensus on why they lost. Reform UK / Leave supporters tend to point to immigration, whereas others point to public services, various scandals that took place when the Conservatives were in office and a general sense of a party out of touch. In this context, it is perhaps no surprise that there is no public consensus about who the next leader should be. Those popular on the right tend to divide opinion with the public as a whole and many of the other candidates are relative unknowns. For lots of reasons, this feels like a leadership contest that is hard to call.”

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