The Conservatives will have dozens of new MPs if the party wins a landslide at the general election – but the party's representatives in the House of Commons will still be predominantly white and male.
About a quarter of the Conservatives' MPs in the next parliament will be women, according to an analysis by BuzzFeed News, only a few percentage points higher than in the last parliament despite Theresa May's push to have more women join her in the Commons.
And only 5% of the Tory benches will be black or Asian – the same proportion as after the last election in 2015, when David Cameron was leading the party.
As the deadline for registering candidates approached late last week, flattering reports in some newspapers portrayed the party as having made huge strides under May toward improving the diversity of its representatives. One report in the Sunday Telegraph claimed the "Theresa factor" had led to a surge in Tory women running for parliament that could "break all records".
However, a close examination of recent opinion polls, various seat projections, and seat selections indicates that, while the party has made incremental improvements, the increased diversity of its representatives is not as pronounced as some had hoped.
About 28% of Tory candidates for this election are women, according to the list of registered candidates, up from 26% in 2015. And about 6% are black or minority ethnic (BME).
Based on recent opinion polls, the Press Association is projecting the Conservatives to win 386 seats on 8 June, up from 331 in 2015.
If that forecast is accurate, the Conservatives will have about 90 women and 20 BME MPs sitting on its benches in the commons, up from 70 and 17 respectively at the last election, according to our analysis of the candidates selected in the most winnable seats.
The number of women Tory MPs would fall short of the record Tony Blair's Labour government set in 1997, when it had 101 female MPs.
Some analysts predict the Tories will do better than 386 seats. The website Electoral Calculus, which has a running prediction based on polls of the last month, forecasts the Tories to win 410 seats. That would see the party beat Labour's 1997 record for female MPs in absolute terms. However, in relative terms it would still only amount to a quarter of the party's total MPs.
Increasing the number of women in parliament has long been a personal ambition of the prime minister.
May cofounded Women2Win, a group dedicated to getting more women on to the Conservative benches in the Commons, in 2005. Back then, the party had only 17 female MPs, or 9% of the total. Now that she is prime minister, May is said to have pushed to have more women on the ballot in this campaign.
There are some signs of progress. The party chose women to contest some of the 11 seats that were left open by MPs not standing for re-election. Six women have been chosen to fill those vacancies, and they are highly likely to be elected to parliament.
Among them is Gillian Keegan, director of Women2Win, who is standing in Chichester, a seat Andrew Tyrie won with a majority of 24,413 in 2015.
Thank you @Chiobserver ..will try my best! Conservative’s bid to be Chichester’s first female MP https://t.co/9UzpGx8ACf
Esther McVey, a former employment minister who lost her seat in the 2015 election, is almost certain to return to Westminster after being chosen for George Osborne’s former seat in Tatton.
And Vicky Ford, who was an influential member of the European parliament before deciding to switch to domestic politics, was selected to stand in the safe seat of Chelmsford.
Looking at the next tier of candidates – those standing in seats the Tories don't already hold but have a realistic chance of winning from Labour, the Liberal Democrats, or the Scottish National Party – the proportion of women is lower, at about a third.
Sam Smethers, chief executive of the Fawcett Society campaign group, said progress on gender diversity appears to have stalled across the board – not just in the Conservative party. The proportion of female MPs in parliament is expected to be around 30% after the election, barely higher than in 2015.
Meanwhile only 5% of Tory candidates are from BME backgrounds, the analysis suggests, unchanged from the last election.
That is disappointingly low, said Simon Woolley, director of the campaign group Operation Black Vote.
"I think they've missed a trick," Woolley told BuzzFeed News. "I think they've missed a huge, huge trick."
Large numbers of ethnic minority voters in Labour-held areas could help the Conservatives turn those areas, Woolley said. Many of those voters feel they have been taken for granted by Labour.
Yet the Tories haven't prioritised BME candidates in their selection lists, even though in a snap election the party leadership could have imposed a more diverse group of candidates if it had wanted to, he said.
The Tories are almost certain to get two new black MPs on 8 June.
Kemi Badenoch, a former executive at the Spectator magazine, is standing in the safe Conservative seat of Saffron Walden, where the Tories are defending a majority of 24,991.
So elated and still can't quite believe it (or sleep for that matter). Thank you @SwccaConse for selecting me as your PPC. Truly honoured!
Bim Afolami, an executive at HSBC, was chosen for the safe seat of Hitchin and Harpenden, previously held by Peter Lilley.
This election could be a historic realignment of politics. https://t.co/6NbZQEkowl
But although they have been given coveted safe seats, which all but assures them a position in parliament, few other BME candidates have been ranked high up the list of candidates.
Paul Uppal, running in Wolverhampton South West in the West Midlands, needs only to overturn a Labour majority of 801 votes to get elected to the Commons. But most other Tory BME candidates face far longer odds.
In the 100 opposition-held constituencies in which the Conservatives have the best chance of winning, there are only four with black or Asian Tory candidates. The majority of new BME candidates standing for the party have instead been placed in constituencies where they would have to overcome majorities of more than 10,000 votes to get elected.
The Conservatives had 17 BME MPs after the 2015 election. They are all expected to retain their seats this time. The addition of Badenoch, Afolami, and Uppal would take the total to 20.
A Tory spokesperson said: "The Conservative party has a proud record of ensuring candidates from all walks of life stand for parliament.”