Reform Voters Will Be Hardest For The Tories To Win Back, New Poll Suggests

Voters who ditched the Conservatives for Reform UK at the last election may be the most difficult for the Tories to win back, a new poll suggests.

A Savanta survey conducted in the run-up to Conservative party conference in Birmingham this weekend shows people who backed Nigel Farage's party on 4 July are significantly more likely to say people like them will be most difficult for the Conservatives to win back over.

Sixty two per cent of respondents who voted Reform at the General Election say Tory-to-Reform switchers will be the hardest for the Conservatives to persuade to return, according to polling shared exclusively with PoliticsHome.

While that statistic may seem unsurprising, the equivalent figures for people who voted Labour and Lib Dem on 4 July are much lower at 33 per cent and 29 per cent respectively.

Chris Hopkins, UK Political Research Director at Savanta, said the findings illustrate the "under-appreciated" stubbornness of Reform voters when it comes to the question of whether they can be convinced to return to the Conservatives.

“There is an assumption that Reform UK voters will be the easiest for a new Conservative leader to win back but, crucially, those very voters disagree.

"An under-appreciated trait of Reform UK voters seems to be how stubborn they tell us pollsters they are, and it'll take more than sounding tough on immigration to win them back.

"After all, it was failing to deliver on a hardline rhetoric that lost those voters in the first place," Hopkins told PoliticsHome.

The four candidates to succeed Rishi Sunak as Conservative leader — Kemi Badenoch, James Cleverly, Robert Jenrick and Tom Tugendhat — will go head-to-head in Birmingham before the party members choose the winner in early November.

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