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One of the reasons you should be sceptical of any kind of public polling of the Conservative leadership race is that if you think about it how these races shape out, it's almost impossible to poll the actual electorate of the leadership race. Let me explain: https://twitter.com/nationalpost/status/1287911991340929024
The most obvious reason, often pointed out, is that it's very difficult, unless you have access to membership lists, which campaigns do but public pollsters often don't. But the real reason is that even if you have access to an existing membership list, it's still hard.
We know that hundreds of thousands of people have signed up to vote for a leader. That's really what leadership races are all about, not convincing members, but mobilizing a specific group of people to vote for you.
Good campaigns often micro target select groups, which is effective campaigning, and basically impossible for public polling that isn't aware of this targeting. I recall learning this directly in 2014 when Patrick Brown won the PCPO leadership, to the shock of pollsters.
Tldr unless you actually poll the leadership selectorate, which is incredibly difficult, you should take all polls with a grain of salt. You should be expecting polls to show MacKay ahead in general polling b/c of name recognition, we don't know how that will impact the result.
