The voting process to decide who becomes the next Conservative leader and prime minister will end this Friday.
Since early August, members of the Conservative party have been casting their votes between Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak to decide who will become the next party leader.
Only members of the Conservative party who joined on or before 3rd June are eligible to vote. Anyone whose membership has expired, been suspended or cancelled is not able to vote. An estimated 200,000 members are eligible to vote.
Truss and Sunak have so far taken part in 11 party hustings events across the country as well as TV and radio debates where they have discussed their policies on topics such as the cost of living crisis and the war in Ukraine.
The 12th and final hustings event will take place this Wednesday in London.
Eight Conservative MPs initially entered the race to succeed Boris Johnson, before the party’s MPs whittled that number down in five fast ballots.
Sunak was initially the early frontrunner, topping votes of Conservative MPs while Truss repeatedly finished third. She scraped into the final pairing on 20th July by just eight votes, pushing Penny Mordaunt (who was in second place for much of the process) out of the competition.
However as the contest was migrated over to party members, Truss has overtaken former chancellor Rishi Sunak as the favourite to win. According to research carried out by Politico which has swept data from all major polls, Truss is currently picking up 57% of the votes, with Sunak gathering 31% and a further 11% remaining undecided or choosing not to vote.
Truss, the bookies favourite, was set to take part in an interview this week with the BBC’s Nick Robinson. However, she pulled out last-minute, with her team saying she could “no longer spare the time” for the event.
Sunak’s campaign have accused Truss of “avoiding scrutiny” and said that swerving this interview suggested she “doesn’t have a plan at all”.
