Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt are battling over a dwindling number of Conservative voters

Voting in the election of a new Conservative leader closes on 22 July. The new leader will be named on 23 July and will take over from Theresa May as prime minister the following day.

But that does not mean that Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt have another two weeks left to convince Conservative members to give them their votes.

Because of the way the postal ballot system works, it is quite possible that the bulk of votes will be cast over the next few days, leaving an ever-dwindling number of activists to woo.

By the time the candidates finally face off in their first televised debate on ITV on 9 July, it is quite possible that the contest will in reality already be over.

Johnson and Hunt were selected by Tory MPs on 20 June to go forward to a ballot of the membership in the country to select May’s successor as leader. At the time, there were understood to be around 160,000 Tory members, though chairman Brandon Lewis has since revised this upwards to 180,000.

It was announced that ballot papers would be sent out between 6 and 8 July, to give members plenty of time to mark their X and send them back to party HQ.

In the event, the first envelopes arrived on doormats on Thursday – 4 July – apparently because party officials had given themselves a bit of extra leeway in order to avoid a flood of phone calls next Monday complaining that the papers hadn’t arrived.

What happened next indicated why the contest may be over long before it officially runs its course.

Hordes of Tory members took to social media to post photos of their ballot papers, filled in and ready to be posted back.

Johnson supporters marked their posts with the hashtag #BackBoris and messages like “Job done already” and “Signed, Sealed, Delivered – Hopefully like Brexit by 31 October”.

With many members expected to return their voting slips over the weekend, it is quite possible that Johnson will have passed the 90,000-vote threshold needed to secure victory by Monday. If not, it is all but certain that the milestone will be passed long before the ballot closes.

The ITV debate, and another hosted by The Sun which both candidates have promised to attend on 15 July – as well as hustings still due to take place in the southeast, Gloucestershire, East Anglia, the east of England and London – may take place in a context when the battle has already be won.

open image in gallery

All of which explains why the candidates have been engaged in a frenzy of announcements and visits and media interviews over the past few days

And it explains why Hunt – who needs as full a contest as possible if he is to claw back ground on frontrunner Johnson – was so keen to get his opponent into a TV studio for a head-to-head debate before ballot papers went out.

The Hunt-backing former PM Sir John Major has issued a plea for members to wait until they have had the chance to see candidates properly grilled in the media before voting. Evidence suggests that plea may be in vain.