TV Debate: Rishi Sunak Wins Show of Hands, but Polls Favour Truss as Next UK PM

Both the conservatives are fighting in a contest that will be decided by the votes of fee-paying party members.

Rishi Sunak (left) and Liz Truss.

(Photo Courtesy: Twitter/@lilygrutcher)

In a head-to-head clash on Thursday, 4 August, former Chancellor Rishi Sunak seemingly won a show of hands against Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, regarding who won the debate between the two Conservative Party candidates battling it out for the leadership of the party and more importantly, for the prime ministerial post in the UK.

Even the television presenter, Kay Burley, who asked for the show of hands after a glitch in the electronic voting system, admitted after the voting, "I wasn't expecting that."

While this may give Sunak a ray of hope about the chances of his leadership campaign, opinion polls paint a different picture.

Opinion Polls Show That Truss Is Quite Far Ahead

Two recent polls gave Foreign Secretary Truss a decisive lead over the Indian-origin former chancellor of the exchequer.

The last survey, conducted by website ConservativeHome, put her around 32 percentage points ahead of Sunak. It showed that 58 percent of those polled supported Truss, while Sunak had the support of about 26 percent of those Tory members surveyed while 12 percent were undecided.

Another survey by YouGov showed that Truss's "lead over her rival has in fact grown to 38 points, with the foreign secretary currently holding 69 percent of the headline vote, to Sunak’s 31 percent."

Do keep in mind that only fee-paying Conservative Party members are allowed to vote in this election. It is pertinent to note, however, that in contrast with the wider UK population, research indicates that more than half of fee-paying Tory members are over 60 years of age and tend to be male residents of southern England and, yes, 97 percent of them are overwhelmingly white.