By-election · Thursday 13 August 2026

Clacton by-election

Nigel Farage resigned as MP for Clacton on 8 July 2026, amid a parliamentary standards investigation into his financial interests, in order to trigger a by-election and stand in it himself. Labour, the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats, the Greens and Restore Britain have all said they will not contest it.

England · East of England · GE2024: Reform UK, majority 8,405 (18.3pp)

Our call · published at close of poll

Reform UK hold

Reform UK hold. Nigel Farage returns as MP for Clacton. This is a call about the ballot paper, not about the electorate. Labour, the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats, the Greens and Restore Britain are all absent, so roughly two-thirds of the national vote has no vehicle in this seat. Farage starts from 46.2% in a contested 2024 race, in a constituency that voted around 75% Leave and that elected Douglas Carswell for UKIP at a by-election in 2014. The record 34-candidate field fragments everything that is not Farage rather than consolidating against him. John Curtice expects a comfortable win.

Basis: structural, not modelled · Confidence: very high. This is a call on the shape of the ballot paper, not a vote-share forecast. What we are explicitly not calling:

Turnout. Mid-August, no mainstream contest, a foregone conclusion at the top of the ballot. The 2014 Carswell resign-and-recontest managed 51.0%, but that had every major party standing.
Farage's share against the 46.2% he won in 2024. A lower share on a fragmented ballot is still a comfortable win and a weaker mandate.
Second place, though less open than it looked in July. Survation put Count Binface on 20% and every other challenger in the low single digits, so Binface second is the strong expectation rather than a coin toss. On a sample of 265 the gap between second and third is still inside the margin of error. Separately, the Ipsos 'who do you want to win' question that put Binface ahead of Farage is a novelty sentiment measure, not a turnout-weighted vote intention, and we are not treating it as a forecast of anything.

A win does not end the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards investigation. Suspension, recall and a further by-election all remain possible afterwards.

The only hard number

What the one constituency poll said

Reform UK

73.0%

Count Binface Party

20.0%

Other

5.0%

Reclaim

2.0%

Survation for Mandate Research, fieldwork 16 to 24 July 2026, sample 265. Head to head, excluding the rest of the field: Reform UK 69.0% against Count Binface 31.0%. Source →

One constituency poll was published during the campaign, after this file was first generated on 23 July. A seat-level poll does not depend on the swing model, so it survives the boycott in a way our national-shares methods do not. It is reported here as the single quantitative anchor available, not adopted as a UKE forecast: the sample is small enough that the margin of error is roughly plus or minus 6 points.

There is no exit poll for this by-election. The national exit poll is commissioned only for general elections, so no by-election has one. Any figure circulating before the declaration is either the Survation constituency poll above, a partial turnout count from tellers outside polling stations, or invention.

Method

Why there is no vote-share forecast

No vote-share forecast. With Labour, the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats, the Greens and Restore Britain all standing aside, no mainstream opponent is on the ballot. Farage is the overwhelming favourite: psephologist John Curtice expects him to win comfortably in a seat that voted roughly 75% Leave in 2016. The only genuinely open question is turnout, in mid-August with the result a foregone conclusion. Every quantitative method we benchmark (GE swing model, poll of polls, local signal) assumes the major parties contest the seat. A five-party boycott breaks that assumption: national vote-intention shares cannot be mapped onto a ballot missing parties that hold roughly two-thirds of the national vote between them. Publishing invented shares would repeat the Makerfield mistake in a different costume. One constituency poll (Survation, n=265) was published after this file was written, and a seat-level poll does not rely on the swing model, so we report it under constituency_polling as the one quantitative anchor that survives the boycott. Reporting someone else's seat poll is not the same as issuing our own modelled shares, and we are not issuing any. We will grade the outcome (winner, margin, turnout) against the qualitative call above.

Method: qualitative · Provider: UK Elections. After Makerfield we publish a numeric central forecast only where a competitive race gives the models something real to estimate. What went wrong at Makerfield →

How we got here

Timeline

Date	Event
7 July 2026	Nigel Farage announces he will vacate the seat and stand in the resulting by-election.
8 July 2026	Resignation effected (appointment as Steward and Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead).
9 July 2026	Writ moved; polling day set for 13 August.
17 July 2026	Nominations close. The candidate list below is declared-so-far, not final.
28 July 2026	Voter registration deadline.
13 August 2026	Polling day.

Farage announced he would vacate the seat and re-contest it himself, saying he wanted Clacton voters rather than the press or parliamentary authorities to decide whether he continues as their MP. The announcement came amid a Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards investigation into his financial interests, including a reported 5 million pound payment from Christopher Harborne (also flagged to the National Crime Agency under the Suspicious Activity Report scheme), alleged cryptocurrency lobbying of the Bank of England, and property declarations. Resign-and-recontest has form in Clacton itself: Douglas Carswell resigned and re-won the seat for UKIP at the 2014 Clacton by-election. Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood 2014) and Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park 2016) are the other modern precedents. A win does not end the standards investigation: suspension, recall and a further by-election all remain possible afterwards.

The ballot

Who is standing, and who is not

Five parties are boycotting: Labour, Conservative, Lib Dem, Green Party, Restore. All five parties confirmed within days of the writ that they will not contest the by-election, framing it as unnecessary and self-inflicted. Kemi Badenoch called it 'Farage's fake by-election'. Restore Britain, the party most directly competing for Reform's vote, also declined to stand.

A record 34 candidates were nominated, the most for any UK by-election, beating the 26 who stood at Haltemprice and Howden in 2008. The size of the field is a direct product of the major-party boycott: with no mainstream opponent on the ballot, minor parties, independents and novelty candidates filled the vacuum.

Candidate	Party	Status
Nigel Farage	Reform UK	nominated
Count Binface	Count Binface Party	nominated
Laurence Fox	Reclaim	nominated
William Clouston	SDP	nominated
John Stevens	Rejoin EU	nominated
Piers Corbyn	Independent	nominated
Kai Stephens	British Democratic Party	nominated
Adham Alkhatip	Forward Party	nominated

The most notable of the 34 candidates on the ballot; nominations closed 17 July 2026. The balance are minor-party, novelty (several Monster Raving Loony) and independent candidates.

The baseline

Clacton at GE2024

Reform UK

46.2%

Conservative

27.9%

Labour

16.2%

Lib Dem

4.4%

Green Party

4.2%

Other

1.1%

4 July 2024: Nigel Farage (Reform UK) 21,225 votes (46.2%), majority 8,405 (18.3pp) over the Conservatives, on a turnout of 45,958 (58.7% of a 78,245 electorate). Clacton also elected Douglas Carswell for UKIP at the 2014 by-election, the party's first elected MP. With the 2024 runners-up all absent from this ballot, the GE2024 shares are context, not a predictor.

What we will grade

The open questions

With no mainstream opposition, the winner call carries almost no information: John Curtice expects Farage to win comfortably in a seat that voted around 75% Leave. What we will record and grade when the result declares: turnout (the 2014 Carswell resign-and-recontest managed 51.0%, but that had all major parties standing, and this is mid-August); Farage's share against the 46.2% he won in a contested 2024 race; and second place, a genuine contest across a record field with no major party in it. An Ipsos "who do you want to win" question put Count Binface ahead of Farage, but that is a novelty measure of sentiment, not a turnout-weighted vote intention, and we are not treating it as a forecast.

Sources: Wikipedia: 2026 Clacton by-election · ITV News, 17 July 2026: record field of candidates · Al Jazeera, 18 July 2026: record 34 candidates as Farage seeks return · Who Can I Vote For: Clacton candidate list · AP via US News, 10 July 2026: by-election set for 13 August