3AUG

Clacton by-election set for 13 August

1 min read

15:31UTC

Farage will restand in the Clacton by-election on 13 August against a field the major parties have vacated, with Count Binface his most prominent challenger.

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Key takeaway

The Clacton by-election is set for 13 August, with the major parties standing aside.

Nigel Farage will restand in the Clacton by-election set for 13 August, the Essex seat he resigned to force the contest . Labour, the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats, The Greens and Restore Britain have all declined to stand , leaving the satirical candidate Count Binface as his most prominent declared challenger. ¹

An Ipsos poll fielded in early July put Binface on 33% against Farage's 21%, a national head-to-head preference measure rather than Clacton voting intention. ² Roughly 40,000 Clacton electors, not the national sample, decide the seat.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Nigel Farage gave up his Clacton seat on 8 July and will fight to win it back in a by-election on 13 August. A poll making headlines put the satirical candidate Count Binface ahead of him, 33% to 21%. That figure is worth reading carefully: it's not a poll of Clacton voters asking who they'll actually vote for. It's a national survey asking people across the whole country to pick between just those two names, which tends to flatter a novelty candidate. Nobody has yet polled Clacton itself.

Deep Analysis

Root Causes

Ipsos's 33%-21% figure is a forced national head-to-head preference question, asking a UK-wide sample to pick between only two named individuals, not a constituency-level voting-intention poll of Clacton electors; national name-recognition polls of this kind systematically favour novelty candidates because respondents who would never vote for either in their own seat still have to pick one.

No pollster has yet fielded constituency-level voting intention in Clacton itself, the actual figure that will decide the 13 August result, so the widely shared 33-21 split describes national sentiment about Farage rather than any measured level of support for Count Binface's candidacy there.

Sources:Ipsos

Mentions:Nigel Farage →Count Binface →Ipsos →Clacton →Essex →Parliament →Restore Britain →Liberal Democrats →Conservative Party →Green Party →

First Reported In

Update #12 · The finance bill Reform outran is back

Ipsos· 15 Jul 2026

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Causes and effects

This Event

Clacton by-election set for 13 August

The by-election decides whether Farage returns to Parliament, which would also reopen the paused standards inquiry.

Led to

Farage to quit Clacton and refight it

The by-election follows directly from Farage's announcement he would resign Clacton.

Occurred 7 Jul 2026

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Every party but Binface boycotts Farage

The contest is shaped by the major parties' earlier decision not to stand candidates.

Occurred 7 Jul 2026

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Clacton draws a record 34 candidates

Farage's resignation from Clacton on 8 July created the by-election that drew a record 34 nominations.

Occurred 17 Jul 2026

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Clacton's ballot paper splits the right four ways

The 13 August by-election date set on 8 July is the poll the nomination paper is for.

Occurred 17 Jul 2026

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Different Perspectives

Democratic Unionist Party

Gavin Robinson rejects Sinn Féin's characterisation of the institutions as precarious, says the DUP is "committed to" delivering for the public, and will not be "goaded" into a dispute he attributes to Treasury funding rather than unionist bad faith.

Sinn Féin

Conor Murphy says Stormont power-sharing is in "a precarious place" and blames the DUP for lacking "the political will to make it work", while insisting his own party remains "wedded to power-sharing".

Council leaders in West Sussex and Cambridgeshire and Peterborough

Officers must recruit staff and set shadow budgets through the autumn for boundaries Whitehall has not yet drawn, after October's deferral cost three months of planning time without settling anything, while their May 2027 election date has not moved.

Restore Britain

Restore Britain beat the Conservatives into fifth place in its first mayoral attempt, evidence Rupert Lowe's party has already displaced the Tories as the default home for voters leaving the Conservative column on Reform's right flank.

Scottish National Party

The SNP, through deputy leader Keith Brown, calls Sarwar's peerage exit "the most undemocratic trick in the Westminster book", arguing Scottish Labour now runs on a caretaker leader chosen by patronage rather than by Scottish voters.

Conservative Party

The Conservatives finished fifth in Greater Manchester, beaten by Restore Britain, a party founded this year, in a contest the Tories once treated as a two-horse race against Labour.