Polling boost for May ahead of the 2nd round of MP voting – bad news for Gove
If May does become PM then she can expect a polling honeymoon
There’s a new national phone poll out from Survation which has CON 36%, LAB 32%, UKIP 12% and LD 9%. The poll also asked favourability questions about the five who were the Tory leadership race until Tuesday evening. The figures are in the chart above and show Theresa May in a totally dominating position with Michael Gove trailing badly.
We are, of course, in the first stage of an election that will eventually be decided by those who have been members of the Tory party for at least three months. The final round of the MP voting to decide the two person shortlist for the membership takes place today with the results expected early evening.
Where May is particularly strong is amongst those saying they’ll vote Tory at the next election. Amongst this group 78.6% said they had favourable view against 12.1% saying unfavourable. With the same segment the must less well-known Leadsom had 28.4% favourable to 20.2% unfavourable.
Amongst Tory voters just 15.4% had a favourable view of Michael Gove compared with 68.4% unfavourable. Extraordinarily Gove’s numbers were worse amongst CON voters than all those in the survey.
Overnight the Hone Secretary has moved to an 81% chance on Betfair of winning the leadership.
Meanwhile there’ve been calls within the party for the election time-table to be truncated so that the new PM can be installed this month. The former party chairman, Grant Shapps, is calling for a three week postal ballot period rather than the current plan which would has the results being announced on September 2nd.
Given the pressures on the financial markets and the need for stability Shapps makes a powerful case.