It's not good news for any of them...
A new poll has revealed what the public thinks about the runners and riders in the Conservative Party leadership contest. It’s not good news for any of them…
Polling firm Savanta asked the public to give one word to describe each of the contenders for the Tory leadership. From this, Savanta then created a ‘word cloud’ illustrating what the most common responses were.
For three of the candidates it seems like name recognition might be the biggest problem. ‘Unsure’ was the most common word given for Tom Tugendhat, Robert Jenrick and James Cleverly. For Tugendhat and Jenrick, ‘unknown’ was also among the common answers.
It’s not much better news for Kemi Badenoch. While ‘unsure’ still featured highly, it wasn’t the number one response given. That honour instead goes to ‘arrogant’, which was also a common response for Jenrick and Cleverly too.
Badenoch had a series of other words associated with her that should give her cause for concern, with ‘dangerous’ being one of the most common responses. ‘Evil’, ‘nasty’ and ‘useless’ also feature on the word cloud.
Negative words associated with Tugendhat are ‘boring’, ‘weak’ and ‘untrustworthy’. For Cleverly, it’s ‘smug’ ‘fascist’ and ‘racist’. Jenrick also got branded ‘boring’, ‘nasty’, and ‘fascist’, with ‘bland’ also featuring heavily.
On the positive side, the most common responses for each candidate were:
- Tugendhat: ‘Genuine’, ‘honest’ and ‘intelligent’
- Cleverly: ‘Intelligent’, ‘clever’ and ‘ambitious’
- Jenrick: ‘Clever’, ‘honest’ and ‘intelligent’
- Badenoch: ‘Strong’, ‘ambitious’ and ‘trustworthy’
Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward
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