As a rule, Conservatives aren’t interested in talking about electoral systems. They usually leave such chatter to disgruntled politicos who think changing the rules can help them perform better in elections. But when it comes to the Conservatives’ own leadership contests, the party should engage in a little electoral introspection. The way the MPs’ ballots are conducted can be crucial to who gains momentum in the race to be Tory leader – and even who comes out on top.
Conservative leadership contests are effectively elimination battles: MPs ballot and the candidate with the fewest supporters drops out. This means that the key factor going into the next round is who went out in the last one. While any MP can change their vote between rounds, few do unless they are forced to; the votes most likely to move are those previously cast for an eliminated candidate.
The leadership contest from almost two decades ago shows how this can work in practice. In 2005, only four candidates were nominated – the same number as remain now. Two candidates were seen as being broadly on the Right of the party (David Davis and Liam Fox), while two were more in the centre (David Cameron and Ken Clarke) – again, much the same as today.
When MPs first cast their votes, Davis topped the poll, followed by Cameron. At the other end of the results table, Fox triumphed over Clarke by a mere four votes – 42 to 38 – and Clarke was eliminated. It was his supporters who were then up for grabs in the next round and, with some eccentric exceptions including Ann Widdecombe, they were mostly more centrist Tories.
Unsurprisingly, the majority of Clarke’s support went to Cameron, who added 34 MPs to his tally and won the second round decisively. Although Davis and Fox got more votes between them than Cameron did, neither came close to knocking him off the top spot.
But, and here’s the crucial bit: had Fox been eliminated first, it is likely that much of his support would have gone to Davis, while much of the support that went to Cameron would have remained with Clarke. This may not have changed the final two, but it probably would have kept Davis in pole position as party members prepared to vote.
In many preferential voting systems, which is what the different rounds of a Conservative leadership race equate to, this wouldn’t matter. But in a Tory contest, those who backed the candidate in third place do not get to express a preference between the final two. In this instance, backers of Fox never got to say in a ballot who, between Davis and Cameron, they supported. Graham Brady, who has unparalleled experience of Conservative leadership contests, has criticised this arrangement and called for an ‘indicative vote’ between the top two candidates to more accurately judge the parliamentary party’s preferences.
What does this mean for this week’s ballots? It requires some generalisations about which MPs are voting for whom, but if in the last round Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick (who together attracted 61 votes) were broadly attracting support from the Right of the party, and James Cleverly, Mel Stride and Tom Tugendhat (who totalled 58 votes) were broadly attracting support from the centre, we can begin to see what might happen next.
Let us imagine that Tugendhat goes out first, as many pundits expect. In the final round, the approximately half of MPs who previously voted for a candidate viewed as being on the Right would have two candidates, Badenoch and Jenrick, to get behind. The roughly half who supported more centrist candidates would only have one, Cleverly. The former Foreign and Home Secretary could easily come out on top in this situation with not much more than a third of MPs behind him. The same would be true for either Badenoch or Jenrick if, rather more surprisingly, one of them is eliminated in the next round, and for Tugendhat if Cleverly is next out. The dynamics of the final MPs’ ballot will depend to a large degree on who comes fourth.
As the Conservatives look to the future, they should consider how their leadership rules work and whether they accurately capture where parliamentary support lies. But that’s a discussion for another day. For now, all the candidates will be hoping that they alone fly the flag for their wing of the party in the final round. If they do, they’re very likely to finish on top in the final ballot of MPs and could gain enough momentum to win the contest.
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