Conservative MP Ben Wallace is the favorite among Tory members to replace Boris Johnson as party leader and prime minister, new polls show.
The Defense Secretary is ahead of all other rivals in a YouGov poll of Tory members who they would vote for.
The sociologist asked the members who they would choose in a head-to-head race, asking about different scenarios with different candidates.
In all scenarios involving Mr. Wallace, he won by a significant margin, they found.
The ex-soldier and MP for Wyre and Preston North, who played a major role in the UK’s response to the war in Ukraine, also leads members’ preferences overall, albeit by a narrower margin.
Tory MPs will ultimately decide who becomes prime minister, but they will only be able to choose between the final two candidates drawn from a larger group of Conservative MPs.
It means Mr Wallace may not make it to the bottom two if he fails to build enough support in the parliamentary party at Westminster.
Mr Wallace leads Liz Truss 48% to 29%, Penny Mordaunt 48% to 26%, Rishi Sunak 51% to 30% and Jeremy Hunt 58% to 22%.
He leads a wide-open field of first-preference candidates with 13 per cent, just ahead of Ms Mordaunt on 12 per cent and Mr Sunak on 10 per cent.
Liz Truss is behind on 8 percent, while Michael Gove and Dominic Raab are on 7 percent each. Tom Tugenhaad gets 6 percent, only the leader of Jeremy Hunt and Nadhim Zahawi on 5 percent and Sajid Javid on 4 percent.
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The UK government is facing another drunken scandal after the deputy mayor left office
NATO Summit in Spain
NATO Summit in Spain
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved
The UK government is facing another drunken scandal after the deputy mayor left office
NATO Summit in Spain
NATO Summit in Spain
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved
The UK government is facing another drunken scandal after the deputy mayor left office
NATO Summit in Spain
NATO Summit in Spain
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved
But Tory members are only part of the story and all candidates will need to survive the earlier rounds of the contest and win the approval of their fellow MPs.
Preferences can also shift during the leadership contest itself, in which the candidates – many of them relatively unknown – will line up their stalls. Mr. Wallace has not yet announced that he will enter the race.
YouGov surveys of party members’ preferences have in the past been generally accurate in both Tory and Labor contests. The sociologist surveyed a weighted sample of 716 members.
Mr Johnson is expected to announce his resignation on Thursday after more than 50 MPs quit government jobs in protest at his handling of a case of alleged sexual abuse by one of his political allies.
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