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Rishi Sunak faces a big task to win back almost 3mn wavering former Conservative voters after a new poll suggested fewer than one in 12 members of this group thought his party deserved to triumph in the UK election.
The prime minister will be especially targeting people who voted Tory at the last election in 2019 but now say they are “don’t knows” in his head-to-head ITV debate with Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer on Tuesday night.
In theory this disgruntled group should be within Sunak’s reach, given its record of backing his party, and polling by consultancy FGS Global found it would still overwhelmingly prefer a Tory government to a Labour government.
But the scale of Sunak’s challenge in persuading the 3mn to vote Tory this year is laid bare by the poll, which found the “2019 Conservative Don’t Knows” were fed up with NHS waiting lists, party splits and his leadership.
In a sign of the sullen mood, only 4 per cent of respondents said Sunak made them feel “optimistic for the future”, compared with a gloomier 2 per cent who said the same about Starmer. Many MPs are predicting a low turnout on July 4.
Sunak scored badly on all measures in the survey, peaking at 18 per cent who thought he knew how to manage the economy. Just 5 per cent said he was “strong”, 3 per cent said he “shares my values”, and 4 per cent said he “understands and cares about people like me”.
The survey of 1,005 people who voted Tory in 2019, conducted between May 21 and May 30 and seen by the Financial Times, was overseen by pollster Lord Andrew Cooper. He said Sunak could salvage scores of seats if he could persuade this group to back the governing party again.
But the relationship between Sunak and this important part of the electorate — about one in five of all those voted Conservative in 2019 or nearly 9 per cent of all voters — is clearly strained, according to the survey.
Some 30 per cent of respondents said Sunak’s leadership was one of the factors putting them off voting Conservative on July 4, compared with 28 per cent who named Liz Truss’ ill-fated and shortlived premiership.
NHS waiting lists, which are higher than they were when Sunak promised to cut them last year, was the most important issue deterring the group from voting Tory (51 per cent). It was followed by the cost of living (47 per cent), immigration and small boats (46 per cent) and the Tories being “too divided” (36 per cent).
Some Tory MPs say Sunak is adopting a “core vote” strategy aimed at shoring up support in this part of the electorate, which is predominantly female (66 per cent), skewed towards older voters (40 per cent are aged over-65) and from the south of England (44 per cent).
The good news for Sunak is that most of these voters would still prefer a Tory government, even if only 8 per cent agreed with the statement that “the current Conservative government deserves to be re-elected”.
The survey found that 82 per cent would still prefer a Conservative administration to a Labour one, but more detailed analysis shows the struggle facing Sunak in persuading them to make that preference a reality.
It found that only 27 per cent intended to vote Tory. Some 29 per cent planned to vote for a different party, including 14 per cent for Reform UK. The survey was carried out before Nigel Farage’s dramatic return on Monday as leader of the rightwing party.
Cooper, a partner at FGS Global, said that if Sunak could persuade the 82 per cent of wavering 2019 Tory voters who would prefer a Conservative government to act on that preference, he could potentially salvage between 60 and 80 more seats.
Cooper said the group was “very unenthusiastic about the Sunak government” but could end up voting tactically against Labour, because almost all of its members had turned out to vote Conservative in the last four elections.
“Rishi Sunak, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss have all played a part in putting these voters off the Tories, but even more than that they are alienated by the party’s divisions,” he said.
Cooper added that Sunak needed strong messages on tax, immigration and defence but especially on the cost of living and the NHS.
Even persuading the “2019 Conservative Don’t Knows” would not save Sunak from election defeat, however, according to a detailed YouGov constituency-level poll on Monday.
It found that Starmer’s party could win 422 seats, with the Tories languishing on 140, giving Labour the biggest majority of any party in a century.