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This article identifies and interprets the voting behaviour of Conservative parliamentarians in the 2024 leadership election which resulted in the election of Kemi Badenoch as leader of the Conservative Party. Our article utilizes an original dataset of the voting preferences of Conservative MPs alongside a range of personal, political, and ideological variables to identify the drivers for their voting preferences across the four eliminative parliamentary ballots and the membership ballot. Our article challenges existing research findings regarding what has driven parliamentarians' vote in previous Conservative Party leadership elections. Previous studies have identified a strong association between the ideological disposition of candidates and their base of parliamentary support, be that in relation to the economy, Europe, or social, sexual, and moral matters. However, within this leadership election, no clearly defined ideological alignments existed between those parliamentarians and the candidates that they decided to back. This represents a significant development in terms of our understanding of the Conservative Party as it seeks to renew itself in opposition.
