The Conservative Party leadership election saw the lowest turnout since member voting was introduced.
Just 72.8pc of eligible Tory members cast a ballot in a race that saw Kemi Badenoch crowned as the new Tory leader after defeating Robert Jenrick.
It was also the lowest-ever number of votes cast for the winner of a Conservative leadership election since voting by members was allowed in 1998.
At 56.6 per cent, this is the lowest vote share for a Tory leadership winner. In 2022, Liz Truss won with 57.4 per cent of the vote.
Mrs Badenoch’s margin of victory – 13.1 percentage points – makes it the tightest Tory race on record. Ms Truss triumphed over Rishi Sunak by a margin of 14.8 points.
The party electorate has shrunk since the last race in summer 2022, with the number of eligible electors now 131,680 – 23.6 per cent lower than the 172,437 who were able to vote two years ago.
This is a different measure to general Tory party membership figures, because new members cannot automatically vote in leadership elections.
To be eligible, a member must have joined the party 90 days before the voting deadline and have been a member when leadership nominations opened.
One of the major tests Mrs Badenoch will face is winning back support from Reform UK, whose four million votes at the election came largely at the expense of the Conservatives. Reform, led by Nigel Farage and Richard Tice, has seen its membership surge.
Emma Levin, an associate director at the polling company Savanta, said: “Turnout was down nine points and 14 points on the 2022 and 2019 contests respectively, which is an outcome our research of Conservative councillors over the summer pointed towards.
“One in seven councillors said they would not vote in the final two contest, and it looks like many members were also dissatisfied with their choice on offer. If Badenoch is unsuccessful as leader, there is likely to be a renewed debate about the party’s selection process.”
Mrs Badenoch is the winner with the third-lowest level of support from fellow Conservative MPs in the final ballot – her 34.7 per cent share higher only than Ms Truss’s 31.6 per cent in 2022. Iain Duncan Smith received support from 32.5 per cent in 2001. Two years later, he was ousted by MPs and replaced by Michael Howard.
However, Mrs Badenoch did attract more parliamentary endorsements as the race progressed. The day before the result was announced, UK bookies on average handed her an 83 per cent chance of winning.
She was the bookies’ favourite for most of the race but, before the Conservative Party conference, Mr Jenrick had enjoyed a boost. Mrs Badenoch had better odds than her rival on 62 per cent of the days since Mr Sunak resigned as leader.
But Mr Jenrick was more popular – or less unpopular – with the public at large. YouGov polling between Oct 30 and 31 handed him a net favourability score of -27 to Ms Badenoch’s -33. Both are more popular than Mr Sunak, whose net favourability rating stands at -43.
A greater share of the public thought Mr Jenrick would make a better PM (12 per cent) than Ms Badenoch (10 per cent). However, a majority said they were not sure how to answer when polled.
Voters polled also thought Sir Keir Starmer makes a better PM than Mrs Badenoch would do, by 27 per cent to 20 per cent.
YouGov also found that only one 19 per cent of Britons said they cared about the Conservative leadership election. Even a majority of 2024 Conservative voters polled – 52 per cent – said it mattered little to them who won.
Fifty-one per cent of voters polled said they felt the Tory party was either not very relevant or not relevant at all in British politics at the moment.
Member voting was introduced in 1998 following the landslide defeat in the 1997 general election. Previously, Conservative leaders had been elected by a ballot of the party’s MPs, an innovation, introduced in 1965. Before that, leaders were chosen after private consultation between leading party members”.