More than half of Britons who voted Conservative in 2017 have said they would vote for Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party in this month’s European Parliament election.
The YouGov survey of 5,412 adults found that 53 per cent of people who voted Tory at the last General Election would abandon the party, while just 27 per cent said they would vote Tory again.
An astonishingly low 13 per cent of those who voted to leave the European Union in June 2016 said they would vote for Prime Minister Theresa May’s party, compared to 58 per cent who said they would vote for the Brexit Party.
The statistics will make for sobering reading for the Tory establishment ahead of both English local elections on Thursday and European Parliament elections on May 23rd, where the party is expected to perform poorly due to its leader, Prime Minister Theresa May, failing to deliver Brexit on time.
The findings are coupled with another YouGov survey published April 30th drawing a grim picture of Britons’ perspective of the Tory Party, with the poll finding that less than one third — 29 per cent — of people who voted Tory in 2017 believe the party is “pro-Brexit,” while a higher percentage — 31 per cent — believe the party is actually “anti-Brexit”.
Various polls over the last two weeks have placed the Brexit Party in first for voters’ intention for the European Parliament election, followed in second by either the Labour or Tory Party with the most recent YouGov poll putting The Brexit Party at 28 per cent, followed by Labour at 22 per cent and the Tories at 13 per cent — less than half that of The Brexit Party.
So concerned are the Tories that they are losing ground to the Nigel Farage-founded party that they have threatened their own party members with expulsion if they campaign for the Brexit Party.
The Tories may not only have to worry about the Brexit Party at the European Parliament elections, with Mr Farage announcing last month his intentions to take his party to the 2022 General Election.
Westminster voting intentions last week put the new party in third place, ahead of the pro-Remain Liberal Democrats, with whom the Tories formed a coalition government from 2010 to 2015.