Another quarter of them said they didn’t want the party to win, but to have enough MPs left to form a decent Opposition and hold the new government to account.
We spoke to 2019 Conservatives who put their chances of voting Tory again at less than five out of ten – the people the party will need to win back if it is to recover ground before the election.
When asked about the overall effect, only 14 per cent of voters said they thought the Budget would leave them better off personally, with 2019 Labour voters (19 per cent) more likely to say this than 2019 Tories (12 per cent).
The first in my series of regular 2024 focus groups included those who put their chances of repeating their 2019 Conservative vote at 3 to 5 out of 10, on the reasoning that if anyone is going to bolster the party’s poll numbers, it will be them.
Voters of all persuasions were downbeat about the state of the country and its immediate prospects: nearly two thirds in my 10,000-sample survey said they thought America was heading in the wrong direction.
We asked voters how likely they thought various outcomes were under a Conservative government, and under a Labour government, Only two things were thought more likely to happen than not in both scenarios: ‘higher taxes for people like me’ and ‘a new financial crisis’.
Still, the argument that tax cuts themselves lead to growth is one that the Conservative Party hasn’t been used to making since the days of David Cameron Mark One.
The former lean towards the idea that American interests are best served by defending freedom and democracy around the world; the latter that US interests are best served by using our resources to improve life for ordinary Americans at home.
No other Republican candidate currently looks likely to defeat the President – but his support is transactional, rather than rooted in any deep enthusiasm for his record.
Even were this not the case, such ratings only weakly correlate to general election outcomes. There is no getting around the hard work of repairing the Party’s standing with voters.
As I crossed the border after three days that I will never forget, I felt a mixture of despair, admiration and optimism.
One of my hopes is that this biography might serve as a valuable guide to the electorate in the months leading up to the next general election, which must be held by January 2025.
You know politics is changing when your tour of competitive parliamentary seats takes you to a seat Jeremy Hunt held in 2015 with a majority of more than 28,000.