Conservative MP Ben Wallace is the favourite among Tory members to replace Boris Johnson as party leader and prime minister, new polling shows.
The Defence secretary beats all other contenders in YouGov polling of Conservative members about who they would vote for.
The pollster asked members who they would choose in a head-to-head contest, asking about various different scenarios with different candidates.
In all scenarios containing Mr Wallace he wins by a significant margin, they found.
The former soldier and MP for Wyre and Preston North, who has played a prominent role in the UK’s response to the war in Ukraine, also comes top of members’ preferences overall, though by a lesser margin.
Tory rank-and-file members will ultimately decide who becomes prime minister but they will only get to choose between a final two candidates, whittled down from a larger field by Conservative MPs.
This means Mr Wallace may not make the final two if he cannot build a big enough support base in the parliamentary party at Westminster.
Mr Wallace beats Liz Truss by 48 per cent to 29 per cent, Penny Mordaunt by 48 per cent to 26 per cent, Rishi Sunak by 51 per cent to 30 per cent, and Jeremy Hunt by 58 per cent to 22 per cent.
He comes top of a wide open field of candidates as the first preference vote with 13 per cent, just ahead of Ms Mordaunt on 12 per cent and Mr Sunak on 10 per cent.
Liz Truss trails on 8 per cent while Michael Gove and Dominic Raab are on 7 per cent each. Tom Tugenhadt polls 6 per cent, just head of Jeremy Hunt and Nadhim Zahawi on 5 per cent and Sajid Javid on 4 per cent.
But Tory members are only part of the story and all candidates will have to survive the earlier rounds of the contest and gain the approval of their fellow MPs.
Preferences could also shift during the leadership contest itself, in which candidates – many of them relative unknowns – will lay out their stalls. Mr Wallace is yet to announce that he will stand in the contest.
YouGov polling of party members’ preferences has in the past been broadly accurate in both Tory and Labour contests. The pollster quizzed a weighted sample of 716 members.
Mr Johnson is expected to announce his resignation on Thursday after more than 50 MPs quit government jobs in protest at his handling of an alleged sexual abuse case by one of his political allies.
