LONDON (AP) — Voting closed Thursday in the months-long contest to lead Britain’s Conservative Party after its crushing election defeat, with the result due to be announced on Saturday.
Tens of thousands of members of the right-of-center party were eligible to vote in the runoff between lawmakers Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick.
In a race that has lasted more than three months, Conservative lawmakers reduced the field from six candidates in a series of votes before putting the final two to the wider party membership.
Both candidates say they think the contest is close, but no reliable polling is available. The party does not regularly disclose how many members it has, though the figure was about 172,000 in 2022, disproportionately affluent, older white men.
The party is choosing a leader to replace former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who in July led the Conservatives to their worst election result since 1832. The Conservatives lost more than 200 seats, taking their tally down to 121.
The winner’s daunting task will be to try to restore the party’s reputation after years of division, scandal and economic tumult, hammer Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer's policies on key issues including the economy and immigration, and return the Conservatives to power at the next election, due by 2029.
Badenoch, 44, was born in London to Nigerian parents and would be the first Black woman to lead a major British political party. A former software engineer, she depicts herself as a disruptor, arguing for a low-tax, free-market economy and pledging to “rewire, reboot and reprogram” the British state. A critic of multiculturalism and self-proclaimed enemy of wokeness, Badenoch recently said that “not all cultures are equally valid.”
Jenrick, 42, is a former moderate who opposed Brexit in Britain’s 2016 referendum on European Union membership but has become more sharply nationalist. He wants to take Britain out of the European Convention on Human Rights, scrap the U.K.’s own Human Rights Act, end mass migration, abolish carbon-emissions targets and “stand for our nation and our culture, our identity and our way of life.”
Jenrick and Badenoch both come from the right of the party and say they can win voters back from Reform U.K., the hard-right, anti-immigrant party led by populist politician Nigel Farage that has eaten away at Conservative support.
But the party also lost many voters to the winning party, Labour, and the centrist Liberal Democrats, and some Conservatives worry that tacking right will lead the party away from public opinion.
The party’s last contested leadership selection, when it was in power in mid-2022, saw members choose Liz Truss over Sunak. Truss resigned as prime minister after just 49 days in office when her tax-cutting plans rocked the financial markets and battered the value of the pound. The party then picked Sunak to replace her.
Britain's Conservative Party leadership candidate Robert Jenrick delivers a speech at Henry Jackson Society, outlining his foreign and defence policy, at Millbank Tower, in central London, Friday, Oct. 25, 2024. (Jonathan Brady/PA via AP)
This combination image shows Conservative leadership candidates Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrickon addressing members during the Conservative Party Conference at the International Convention Centre in Birmingham, England, Oct. 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Kamala Harris said Thursday that Donald Trump’s comment that he would protect women whether they “like it or not” shows that the Republican presidential nominee does not understand women’s rights “to make decisions about their own lives, including their own bodies."
“I think it’s offensive to everybody, by the way," Harris said before she set out to spend the day campaigning in the Western battleground states of Arizona and Nevada.
The remarks by Trump come as he has struggled to connect with women voters and as Harris courts women in both parties with a message centered on freedom. She's making the pitch that women should be free to make their own decisions about their bodies and that if Trump is elected, more restrictions will follow.
Trump appointed three of the justices to the U.S. Supreme Court who formed the conservative majority that overturned federal abortion rights. As the fallout from the 2022 decision spreads, he has taken to claiming at public events and in social media posts that he would “protect women” and make sure they wouldn’t be “thinking about abortion.”
At a rally Wednesday evening near Green Bay, Wisconsin, Trump told his supporters that aides had urged him to stop using the phrase because it was “inappropriate.”
Then he added a new bit to the protector line. He said he told his aides: “Well, I’m going to do it whether the women like it or not. I am going to protect them.”
Harris said the remark was part of a pattern of troubling statements by Trump.
“This is just the latest on a long series of reveals by the former president of how he thinks about women and their agency," she said.
Trump's comments increased the sniping between the campaigns as both vie for women voters, who generally compose the majority of the electorate. Harris surrogate Mark Cuban, the billionaire businessman, said in an interview with “The View” that Trump doesn't surround himself with “strong, intelligent women — ever.”
Cuban's remark drew swift rebukes from women involved in Trump's political operation, with his campaign chief, Susie Wiles, saying in a rare social media post that she's “been proud to lead this campaign.” Campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt also went after Cuban, saying he had “insinuated female Trump supporters are ‘weak and dumb.’”
More broadly, Trump and Republicans have struggled with how to talk about abortion rights, particularly as women around the nation are grappling with obtaining proper medical care because of abortion restrictions that have had implications far beyond the ability to end an unwanted pregnancy.
Trump has given contradictory answers about his position on abortion, at some points saying that women should be punished for having abortions and showcasing the justices he appointed. During his successful 2016 campaign, he told voters that if he were elected, he would appoint justices to the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade and said he was “pro-life.”
But in recent weeks he's promised to veto a national abortion ban, after repeatedly refusing to make such a pledge. He's said the states should regulate care and said some laws were “too tough.”
Since 2022, the patchwork of state laws on abortion has created uneven medical care. Some women have died. Others have bled in emergency room parking lots or became critically ill from sepsis as doctors in states with strict abortion bans send pregnant women away until they are sick enough to warrant medical care. That includes women who never intended to end pregnancies. Both infant and maternal mortality has risen.
Harris’ campaign has seized on Trump’s statements around women. In one campaign ad, a woman who became gravely ill with sepsis after a pregnancy complication stands in front of a mirror looking at a large scar on her abdomen, as audio plays of Trump’s comments about protecting women.
Harris hopes abortion will be a strong motivator for women at the ballot box.
In early voting so far, 1.2 million more women than men have voted across the seven battleground states, according to data from analytics firm TargetSmart.
That doesn’t necessarily translate into Democratic gains. But in the 2020 presidential election, there was a 9 percentage point difference between men and women in support for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 110,000 voters.
The Democratic ticket was supported by 55% of women and 46% of men. That was essentially unchanged from the 2018 midterms, when VoteCast found a 10-point gender gap, with 58% of women and 48% of men backing Democrats in congressional races.
Liz Cheney, a conservative Republican who has been campaigning for Harris, has noted on the trail that ballots are secret and suggested that Republicans who want to quietly vote against Trump can do so. A new campaign ad narrated by Julia Roberts shows a woman entering the voting booth and voting for Vice President Kamala Harris.
“You can vote any way you want,” Roberts says as the voter exchanges a knowing glance with another woman. “And no one will ever know.” As she leaves the voting booth, her husband asks, “Did you make the right choice?” to which the wife says, “Sure did, honey.”
”Remember, what happens in the booth, stays in the booth,” Roberts says.
That ad inflamed some Trump supporters, including Charlie Kirk, the Turning Point USA founder who is central to former Trump’s turnout operation in multiple key states.
Kirk, speaking on conservative Megyn Kelly’s podcast, called the ad “repulsive” and “disastrous,” labeling it “the embodiment of the downfall of the American family.”
Kirk also assumed, based on nothing expressed in the ad, that the husband “probably works his tail off to make sure that she can go and have a nice life and provides for the family,” but “Harris and her team believe that there will be millions of women who undermine their husbands.”
Kirk’s web of organizations are critical to the Trump campaign’s turnout operation, specifically working statewide in Arizona and Wisconsin, two key swing states.
Harris has rallies scheduled Thursday in Phoenix, Reno, Nevada, and Las Vegas. Meanwhile, Trump is traveling to New Mexico and Virginia in the campaign’s final days, taking a risky detour from the seven battleground states to spend time in places where Republican presidential candidates have not won in decades.
Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris arrives to speak at a campaign event Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024, in Madison, Wis. (AP Photo/Morry Gash)
Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris boards Air Force Two before departing Dane County Regional Airport in Madison, Wis., Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (Brendan Smialowski/ Pool via AP)
Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris walks to board Air Force Two before departing Dane County Regional Airport in Madison, Wis., Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (Brendan Smialowski/ Pool via AP)
Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris walks to board Air Force Two before departing Dane County Regional Airport in Madison, Wis., Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (Brendan Smialowski/ Pool via AP)
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump waves after speaking at a campaign rally at Resch Center, Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024, in Green Bay, Wis. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at Resch Center, Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024, in Green Bay, Wis. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at Resch Center, Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024, in Green Bay, Wis. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during a campaign rally at the Alliant Energy Center in Madison, Wis., Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during a campaign rally at the Alliant Energy Center in Madison, Wis., Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris arrives to speak during a campaign rally at the Alliant Energy Center in Madison, Wis., Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
