Kemi Badenoch’s victory in the Conservative party leadership election was hardly a landslide. He was able to gain only a third of MPs’ support in the final round; He was only one vote ahead of his rival Robert Jenrick. His share of the membership vote in the final round is the lowest ever for a winner under the current system, where voting among MPs is followed by a membership vote.

Conservative MPs are evenly split between MPs on the right of the party (backing Badenoch, Jenrick and Priti Patel) and those in the center of the party (backing James Cleverly, Tom Tugendhat and Mel Stride).

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The centrists blew their chances of getting one of their candidates into the final round when Cleverly supporters engaged in uncoordinated tactical voting to keep out the stronger right-wing candidate. This It backfired spectacularly. and served to increase the support levels of both of Cleverly’s rivals at its own expense.

I became gather information To find out how the support for the last two candidates was divided, the public statements of the MPs were examined. This has been a difficult exercise as MPs have been less outspoken about who they support in this contest compared to previous contests. When membership voting closed, only 47.5% of MPs announced who they supported; 30 MPs supported Badenoch and 27 MPs supported Jenrick.

From a demographic perspective, Badenoch attracted a larger proportion of female and ethnic minority MPs (his support was 27% and 20% respectively, compared to Jenrick’s support of 22% and 7%). Only one in five LGBT Conservative MPs made a public statement of support, and this was in favor of Badenoch.

There is also a clear distinction of experience. MPs from the new 2024 cohort had just 7% of Badenoch’s support, compared to 26% for Jenrick. MPs serving in opposition positions and therefore with more experience made up 80% of Badenoch’s public supporters, compared to just 44% on Jenrick’s side.

We also see some interesting differences from previous leadership elections (note that I did not include the new group of MPs in this part of the analysis).

In 2022, half of Jenrick’s support base backed Liz Truss, while Badenoch had 32% of his base, and the figures have essentially reversed for support for Sunak. The funny thing is that four of the eight MPs who openly backed Badenoch in 2022 backed him again in 2024, while the other four backed Jenrick.

In the second of the leadership contests in 2022, 61% of Badenoch’s supporters backed Sunak, compared to just 35% of Jenrick’s supporters. Remarkably, none of the ten MPs who backed Boris Johnson publicly backed Badenoch this time, compared to the five who backed Jenrick.

Freelance Marketers and One-Nationals

We can also look at the relationship between affiliation with conservative-leaning groups and candidate support. MPs associated with one-nation groups (Bright Blue, One Nation Conservatives and Tory Reform Group) were evenly distributed across both camps. These MPs make up 45% of the total Parliamentary Conservative Party (PCP) and account for 46% of Badenoch’s support and 45% for Jenrick.

However, Jenrick fares much better among the culturally conservative Common Sense Group (20% vs Badenoch’s 4%) and the Eurosceptic European Research Group (40% of his support base vs Badenoch’s 25%). gave a performance; but the difference in raw numbers is only one MP). We see that the hawkish China Research Group MPs are also turning to Jenrick; Although they make up 14% of the PCP, they account for 30% of Jenrick’s support and 11% of Badenoch’s support.

On the economic dimension, Badenoch won over a large share of the relatively small group of free market MPs (those affiliated with the Free Market Forum of the Institute of Economic Affairs or the Canzuk Conservatives, who want a post-Brexit reorganization of foreign relations between Canada, Australia and Australia). New Zealand) – 11% vs 5% for Jenrick.

MPs who supported leveling up (those affiliated with Blue Collar Conservatism, Onward’s Leveling Up Task Force and the Northern Research Group) made up 45% of Jenrick’s base. Despite making up only 36% of Badenoch’s support base, he actually won more MPs from this group (ten versus nine).

When put together then some interesting themes emerge. Firstly, Badenoch was the favorite among established MPs compared to Jenrick, who won the support of new MPs. This is a good position for the new leader to be in, given that new MPs will be more willing to rise through the ranks of the opposition and therefore more likely to show loyalty to the new leader rather than rebel. Having experienced MPs on his side will help stabilize his shadow cabinet.

Second, although the entire contest was framed as a struggle between the right and center of the party, MPs from the one-nation wing were evenly distributed between the final two candidates. They did not decide to abstain, which would have sent a strong message to the future leader.

Even in the fourth round, when a centrist candidate (Cleverly) was available, MPs from a country that had openly declared its candidacy accounted for half of Badenoch’s support, 39% of Jenrick’s support and only 33% of Cleverly’s support. This suggests that the mono-national group within the party is perhaps more eclectic than presented in the comments. And since they made their positions public, we can be pretty sure they were not part of the tactical vote that failed.

So while Badenoch is in a relatively strong position, there are some groups he might want to extend an olive branch to in the name of party unity. These include new MPs, cultural conservatives, China hawks and those backing Johnson in 2022.