RISHI Sunak won't quit the Tory leadership race and hand Liz Truss the crown, one of his top allies insisted today.
Mel Stride said there was no way he was giving up – despite a string of polls saying he's way behind in the race to become the next PM.
And he said people on the ground were way more supportive of the ex-Chancellor than the polls were showing.
A YouGov poll for The Times this week gave Ms Truss a staggering 34 point lead.
The pair will go up against each other in a Sky grilling with Kay Burley tonight at 8pm.
And they will field more questions from undecided voters as they face off in the fight to become the next Tory leader and PM.
Mr Stride, chairman of the Commons Treasury Committee, was asked whether Rishi was thinking about conceding.
Andrea Leadsom got through to the final two against Theresa May but then pulled out of the race – handing her the keys to No10.
But Mr Stride replied: "Not at all, absolutely not. There is all to play for here.
"There is a huge disconnect between the polling there has been around the membership of the Conservative party, which is inherently very difficult to carry out.
"It's also the case it can very easily be skewed because these pollsters will not know where the various concentrations of the membership are, geographically and within different constituencies.
"What we are finding, is that there is a huge support for Rishi, far in advance of that that appears to be coming through in the polls.
"What really matters is, who is going to win the next election for the conservatives? If you look at those polls, it's very clear, it's Rishi Sunak.
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"I sense on the ground a very different feeling than these polls."
And he warned that Ms Truss's plans for the economy and public finances were "dangerous".
He said stoking inflation by making tax cuts now would be a huge mistake.
Earlier this week, Sir Robert Buckland, the Welsh secretary and a Sunak supporter, said that anyone predicting the outcome "doesn't know the membership of the party".
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