The Conservative Voters Secretly Hoping for a ‘Wipeout’ of Rishi Sunak’s Party

A quarter of those voters who still intend to vote for the Conservatives, actually believe the party should lose to Labour, with one-in four saying a wipeout for Rishi Sunak’s party would in reality be a “positive” result for the country, according to exclusive new polling for Byline Times.

Senior Conservatives have spent the past week warning voters that Labour are on course for a “supermajority” in an attempt to scare conservative-leaning voters back into the fold.

However, new polling conducted this week by pollsters We Think for this paper suggests this is unlikely to gain much traction.

According to the poll, voters are actually more likely to say the Conservatives losing most of their MPs would be a “positive” outcome for the UK rather than a negative one.

Even among those voters still planning to back the Conservatives, there seems little real fear of the party losing most of its MPs, with 20% saying they actually think it would be a positive result, compared to 58% who disagree and 22% who are neutral, or unsure.

Even the prospect of the Conservatives being replaced as one of the two major parties in British politics does not appear to scare most voters.

Asked whether the Conservatives coming in third place behind the Liberal Democrats would be a good or bad outcome, almost half (47%) of those voters surveyed said it would be positive, compared to just 27% who disagreed.

Even among current Conservative voters, a significant minority of 15% said such a result would be a positive outcome from the election.

A similar number (14%) of current Conservative voters also admitted that the Labour Party now “deserves” to win the general election, compared to 74% who disagreed and 11% who are still unsure.

Among the population as a whole, just 35% said Labour don’t deserve to win, compared to 47% who believe they do.

The findings offer little hope to Conservative strategists hoping for a squeeze of conservative-leaning voters in the final two weeks of the campaign, and suggests that the party’s vote share could even decrease further, due to some of those currently sticking with them apparently having little fear of a wipeout for the party.

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A Breach of Trust

In a week in which it was revealed that senior Conservative officials and candidates had bet on the date of the general election, shortly before it was announced by Sunak, the poll also found widespread distrust of the Prime Minister.

Asked whether they viewed Sunak as being “more honest” or “more dishonest” 51% of all those surveyed put him in the latter category, compared to just 21% who put him in the former category.

Even among current Conservative voters 13% described Sunak as being more dishonest than honest, with 62% disagreeing.

The poll also found that, despite portrayals of Nigel Farage as being a politician who “says it like it is” voters are more likely to say that Nigel Farage is dishonest than honest, by 36% to 27% in this poll.

Voters were also narrowly more likely to say the opposite of Labour leader Keir Starmer. The Labour leader was described as being more honest than dishonest by 33% of those voters surveyed, compared to 28% who said the opposite.