Backing Badenoch: The Conservative Party Leadership Election of 2024

Abstract

This article identifies and interprets the voting behaviour of Conservative parliamentarians in the leadership election that resulted in the election of Kemi Badenoch as leader of the Conservative Party. Our article utilises an original dataset of the voting preferences of all Conservative MPs, alongside a range of possible 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 the vote of parliamentarians in previous Conservative Party leadership elections. Previous studies had 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.

Dr David Jeffery

Lecturer in Politics

My research interests include British politics (widely defined), Liverpool’s political history, Scouse identity, and quantitative methodologies.