London 14 August : Foreign secretary Liz Truss holds a commanding 22-point advantage over former British Indian minister Rishi Sunak in the race to be the next Tory leader and UK prime minister in a poll of members of the party to The Observer.With just three weeks remaining before the deadline of September 2 to vote, the poll of Opinium of 557 Conservative members places the foreign secretary at 61 % and former chancellor at 39 percent, The Guardian reported.
Truss The lead is, however, lower than in other polls of the Tory electorate, suggesting that Sunak might have closed the gap in recent days.
She is under increasing pressure due to her decision to not back what she refers to as “handouts” to assist individuals with the cost of energy and was heavily criticized for a u-turn on pay increases for public sector workers outside of London as well as the south-east of England.
Opinium’s in-depth questioning also exposes an eerie absence of enthusiasm for either candidate when asked if they’d rather one of them over Boris Johnson to run the party and the country, The Guardian reported.
Opinium asked the members what the most important reason for them to vote for one of the two candidates.
For Sunak the most frequently mentioned motive was he is better in managing the economy (22 percent) while 10% of respondents said that they thought he was the most knowledgeable or skilled.
One of the main reasons cited by those who voted for Truss was the dislike of Sunak (14 percent).
The same percentage (14 percent) said that the foreign secretary was more trustworthy and reliable, while 10% decided to go with the fact that she was committed to Johnson and did not call on Sunak to resign.About 2 percent of Tory members identified the race of their family or the ethnicity they belong to as the reason to vote for Truss instead of Sunak.
Chris Curtis of Opinium said that despite a growing sentiment of nostalgia within Tory members for Johnson and a less-than-ecstatic reaction to any of the candidates vying to succeed him, it was hard to imagine how Truss might not succeed in becoming the next premier, The Guardian reported.
“From the day we learned the two final candidates it was evident that Truss has been gaining power, and the most recent survey shows just how big her lead among the members of the party has grown,” he said.
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