Three key stats and what they tell us about the Conservative Party
This has also been our busiest few weeks yet for the Opinion Brief podcast: we’ve brought you special episodes from the Labour and Conservative conferences - including live recordings of our panel events with some of the biggest names from both parties. We also have lots of great content on the Greens, Liberal Democrats and Reform. So do check out the podcast to catch up on our analysis:
We’re now reaching the end of our 2026 conference season. Next week, we’re heading up to Aberdeen for our final event at the SNP conference (keep your eyes peeled for new Scottish research here!).
But with the end in sight, we wanted to say a huge thank you for our best conference season yet!
We’ve held dozens of events exploring public opinion on some of the biggest issues facing the country, and hosted panels with cabinet ministers, senior figures from across every party, journalists and civil society leaders. Our events have been among the best-attended at each conference, and our analysis has featured across the media.
So huge thanks to all of our wonderful partners for working with us - and for everyone who attended any of our events. If you’re interested in partnering with us next year, please do get in touch.
Can’t wait for next year!
What happened in Holborn?
When Keir Starmer resigned in September, triggering a by-election it became clear the race would test two things: whether Andy Burnham has really managed to reunite the left behind Labour, and whether Zack Polanski could get his mojo back after a difficult few months.
Labour’s Sagal Abdi-Wali won with 45 per cent of the vote, a majority of more than 3,000 over Polanski on 33 per cent.
This was a comfortable Labour win, and a sign of Burnham’s consolidation of the left - winning back disillusioned progressives who felt alienated by Keir Starmer. It’s the tightest majority the seat has seen, but the Labour vote barely moved. Labour fell just four points on Starmer’s 2024 result. In a by-election, where governing parties usually lose votes and often dramatically, that is a relatively strong result.
Meanwhile the Green vote rose, but far less significantly than it might first appear. Polanski’s 33 per cent is 22 points up on the Greens’ 2024 result. But Andrew Feinstein, the left-wing independent who took 19 per cent here in 2024, didn’t stand this time and backed Polanski. Add the Greens and Feinstein’s 2024 support together and you get 29 per cent, so Polanski improved on that combined left vote by only a few points.
So this is certainly a sign that Polanski’s momentum has stalled. Even if you don’t include Feinstein’s voters, the swing to the Greens was 13 points - half the 26-point swing they won in the Gorton and Denton by-election. If this race had taken place a few months ago - when Keir Starmer was Prime Minister and Zack Polanski was at his peak in the polls - it’s fair to say we would have expected the result to look quite different.
Nationally, Burnham has started to reunite the left. Labour’s share of the “left bloc” has risen from a low of 43 per cent to 58 per cent. And while following the Gorton and Denton by-election, more than one in ten Labour voters were defecting to the Greens, this has fallen to around five per cent. Labour is also winning back many voters from the Liberal Democrats and Reform UK - only the six per cent of voters they are losing to the Conservatives have remained stable.
We heard this from our focus groups in Holborn: left-leaning voters who had felt let down by Keir Starmer, and were now feeling cautiously optimistic about Andy Burnham. Some felt that Burnham was just a better communicator, more relatable and less ‘robotic’ than his predecessor; but many were able to point to things that he had announced or introduced in his first months as evidence that he was different from Starmer in substance. As Imran said, many felt it was a ‘waiting game’ - to see whether Burnham lives up to his promises.
“One thing I can say is that he's a good communicator compared to Keir Starmer. He does actually get his points across quite clearly, and I think (...) he's more relatable to the working class because of his background (...) Keir Starmer was a bit more robotic in his approach.” Tariq, Central London
“With the housing scheme he proposed last week (...) first-time buyers, people that can't get on the market. I feel like that's one of the biggest pains in the country right now, people can't get onto the property ladder. (...) At the moment, I'm open. He seemed like a good guy. As I said, he's saying all the right things, but it's more of a waiting game, to be fair, to see what gets delivered.” Imran, Automotive consultant
“His speech was nice (...) he spoke about homelessness, the rough sleeping, felt like he touched on really good topics. But again, is it just the speech to get us all on his side? What is he actually going to do?” Grace, Operations executive
For some voters we’ve spoken to, Gaza catalysed their anger toward Keir Starmer’s government. In a focus group with Muslim voters in the seat this week, we heard from people who described their families voting Labour loyally for years, but now feeling like that loyalty was beginning to break down. The government’s perceived inaction on Gaza was cited as one of many reasons they felt disconnected from the Labour Party. And while some appreciated the announced sanctions on Israeli West Bank settlers, it was clear that for others the trust would take longer to build back - and that this was one of the drivers of support for the Greens.
"They haven't called it out as a genocide and it's black and white now. You can see the pictures (...) I don't think even sanctions is enough. [They need] to cut ties with the Israeli government and call it for what it is, like the way they've done in Ukraine." Faisal, Railway technician
"I think (Polanski) is doing a great job putting himself out there. He's very confident, that's for sure. And obviously he's plain and simple about the Gaza issue (...) He's just saying things straight up, and I do like that about him." Habib, Railway worker
But when we asked why voters were planning to vote Green, often their answers were economic, and focused on addressing inequality and tackling the cost of living crisis. This reflects the research we released at the Green conference last week, showing that while Green voters diverge from the median of public opinion on issues like Gaza, economic concerns are far more salient.
As for Polanski, it’s clear he is both an appeal to some voters and a barrier for others. He seems to mobilise his core supporters, but alienates some ‘Green considerers’.
He still has a core of voters who view him very positively: the proportion of Britons who like him has remained relatively stable, even as a growing number of Britons view him more negatively. And he remains highly popular among young women.
His net approval rating has slumped in recent months - making him Britain’s most unpopular party leader. His response to the Golders Green attack, and other perceived missteps - most recently the ‘Zionism is racism’ row - have shifted public opinion on him. And for many Britons, including some we’ve spoken to in our focus groups in Holborn, these incidents were the first they had heard of the Green leader. Alongside ceding some of his own supporters to a revived Labour Party, there may be a growing group of voters who feel motivated to turn out against him.
"[The Greens] have changed since Zack Polanski took over, and he actually brought about a lot of the old Labour values about social justice, about being fair and all of that stuff. (...) (When he wins the by-election): Yeah, I'll be popping open a halal bottle of champagne." Tariq, Central London
"I'm so against Zack Polanski. I think he'll make a terrible MP (...) he is politically very ignorant. He says what he thinks will make him popular. Then people have to go and delete his tweets." Fiona, EFL teacher
For Burnham, this is the strongest evidence yet that his consolidation of the left is real, and it comes in exactly the kind of North London seat where Labour was bleeding support to the Greens a few months ago. But any renewed calls for an early election might be premature: his progress on the left is still well ahead of his progress with voters who left Labour for Reform or the Conservatives. And in our focus groups with progressive voters who are drifting back to Labour, it’s clear that their return is highly conditional: many feel that he looks and sounds different to Starmer, but like Imran, many are still waiting to see if he follows through.
Three key stats and what they tell us about the Conservative Party
This week we were in Birmingham for the Conservative Party Conference, where we launched our new research on the state of the party. When we presented our findings at last year’s conference, the Conservatives’ predicament looked somewhat existential. Nigel Farage was dominating the attention economy, Kemi Badenoch was struggling to cut through, and our MRP suggested the Tories could be left with just 41 seats after the next election. Yet any suggestion that the Conservatives were a write-off now looks premature.
Yet some real challenges remain for the Conservative Party, and there are three key stats that help us understand where they are:
Only a third (34 per cent) of those who think Kemi Badenoch is doing a good job would actually vote for the Conservatives.
The Conservative Party leads among Britons who do the weekly shop at M&S, but is behind among most other supermarket shoppers.
The Conservatives’ pool of potential voters is almost evenly split between people who are voting for a party on the left (45 per cent plan to vote Liberal Democrat, Labour or Green) and those who are voting for a party on the right (53 per cent plan to vote Reform UK or Restore Britain).
Only a third of those who think Kemi Badenoch is doing a good job would vote Conservative
A year ago, the Conservatives’ biggest challenge was for Kemi Badenoch just to get a hearing. Now, it’s converting Badenoch fans into Conservative voters.
Her approval rating has climbed in recent months. She is now one of only two party leaders with a net positive approval, and Reform voters in particular have warmed to her. Compared to Burnham or Farage, she has less social media cut-through, but her performances in the House of Commons have helped: two in five Britons (39 per cent) saw Badenoch at PMQs in the past year, and those who did are twice as likely to say she is doing a good job. They are also more likely to describe her as intelligent, professional, principled and decisive.
Yet the Conservative Party’s vote share remains stubbornly low; the Tory brand is taking much longer to heal. A common refrain in focus groups is that voters on the right like Kemi Badenoch, but lament that she is leader of the Conservative Party.
“She’s fantastic. (...) But like I say, she’s head of an empty party. It’s a shell of a party really, isn’t it?” Sam, social services, Stretford
“There’s no shilly-shallying with her. I think she speaks sense and she’s the only politician I’ve ever listened to that, when she’s asked a question… actually answers straight away (...) And if you didn’t know which party she was head of, I agree with a lot of the things she said.” Cheryl, interior designer, Hale
The Conservatives lead among those who do the weekly shop at M&S, but struggle elsewhere
The Conservatives risk becoming the “M&S party”. They lead clearly among M&S shoppers and marginally among Sainsbury’s shoppers, but are behind at every other supermarket we tested. That reflects their voter coalition, which is older, wealthier and concentrated in the least deprived parts of the country.
The only generation where the Conservatives have a lead is the over-75s, at 40 per cent. Their vote share is no higher than 20 per cent with voters under 60, and they are polling at just 11 per cent with Gen Z.
And it seems that the Battle of the Right is defined by income: if you’re on the right and earn over £40,000, you’re more likely to vote Conservative. If you earn less, you’re more likely to vote Reform.
Many of the Conservative Party’s key policy announcements at this conference - scrapping inheritance tax for family homes, and expanding free childcare to those earning more than £100,000 - seem to be aimed at winning over more affluent Tories in the Blue Wall. But they might have rather less appeal in the Red Wall seats won in 2019.
The Conservatives’ potential voters are split evenly between left and right.
The party has a high ceiling. With 22 per cent of the vote, the Conservatives are five points behind Labour, but an extra 22 per cent of likely voters would consider backing them - meaning 44 per cent of voters are reachable for the Conservatives in theory. That compares with 45 per cent for Labour and 38 per cent for Reform UK.
The challenge is that there is a hidden divide in that voter pool. Of those who would consider voting Conservative, roughly half (45 per cent) currently support Labour, the Liberal Democrats or the Green Party, and half (53 per cent) support Reform UK or Restore Britain. These two groups look very different.
The Tory-Curious Right (currently Reform UK or Restore Britain voters) are more likely to feel financially insecure and to live in small towns, villages and rural areas, and three quarters (75 per cent) voted for Brexit. They like Nigel Farage and dislike Andy Burnham.
The Tory-Curious Left (current Labour, Liberal Democrat and Green voters) are more affluent and much more likely to live in London and other cities. They are three times as likely as the Tory-Curious Right to have a degree, and to earn over £70,000. Most like Andy Burnham but dislike Nigel Farage.
Net zero is the biggest dividing line: three quarters of the Tory-Curious Left (76 per cent) support net zero, compared with 16 per cent of the Tory-Curious Right.
But the two groups are not irreconcilable. Both like Kemi Badenoch, both believe the Conservatives have a credible economic agenda, and neither believes the Conservatives’ approach is too tough on immigration. Many of the Conservatives’ key tax and spend policies are overwhelmingly popular across their voter pool.
Read our full analysis of the state of the Conservatives here:
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