While elite unity is the central pillar of authoritarian regime stability, the defection of ruling elites often threatens authoritarian rule. Recent studies show that elite defections are associated with sources of regime vulnerability, emboldening the opposition and led at times the regime breakdown. However, despite the importance of elite defections to understand why autocracies collapse, there has been a shortfall of empirical work and data that examines how elites defect. This paper proposes new dimensions around the concept of elite defection, such as its timing and the way of joining the opposition. The relevance of these dimensions is illustrated with a novel dataset on the political careers of 30,018 deputies and ministers in 24 electoral autocracies. Descriptive analyses lead to the generation of hypotheses that can serve as building blocks for explanatory theory. The findings suggest new research avenues in the field of authoritarian politics and democratization.