Who’s leading in the 2024 Conservative Leadership Election? Comparing Candidates Endorsements
In light of the 2024 UK Election which saw the Conservative party's seat share drop from 365 to 122 (their lowest in history), a leadership election was called to replace Rishi Sunak as leader of the Conservative party.
So far a total of six candidates have put their name forward for the top job including some big names as such as Priti Patel, James Cleverly and Kemi Badenoch and with less than four weeks until the first round of voting starts, it's worth looking to see which candidates have captured the support of others.
According to a survey of 921 members conducted by ConservativeHome, Kemi Badenoch takes the lead with 33%, Robert Genrick with 19% and Tom Tugendhat on 10%.
William Atkinson
The big question is, how does this compare with publicly declared endorsements?
Using information recorded from Wikipedia, this post focuses on understanding which candidates have the most support and who are mostly likely to be eliminated on the first ballot.
It's worth mentioning, that due to the way Conservatives leaders are elected, Conservative MPs vote on a candidate, eliminate the candidate with the lowest number of votes, and repeat until only two candidates are left. These two candidates are then decided by Conservative party members.
With this in mind, let's first look at endorsements for just conservative MPs.
Unlike the ConservativeHome poll, the MP endorsements put Robert Jenrick in the lead with 9 endorsements and has Kemi Badenoch and Mel Stride in joint second with just 6 endorsements. I would expect that this could change a fair amount as we approach the first round of voting, with more and more making their preferred candidate known before they vote.
Looking at the bigger picture, when former MPs are factored into the count, Kemi Badenoch has a clear lead in front of her opponents with a total of 23 endorsements from MPs, former MPs and peers. However, candidates such as James Cleverly and Robert Jenrick have managed to broaden their support by gaining endorsements, not just from MPs and former MPS, but from other politicians and individuals too.
