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UK Local Elections 2026
12AUG

Clacton by-election set for 13 August

1 min read
14:07UTC

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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PoliticsDeveloping
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
Read story →
Every party but Binface boycotts Farage
The contest is shaped by the major parties' earlier decision not to stand candidates.
Occurred 7 Jul 2026
Read story →
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
Read story →
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
Read story →
Different Perspectives
Sinn Féin
Sinn Féin
Sinn Féin's John O'Dowd ruled out a Stormont walkout on 11 August despite calling the DUP increasingly difficult to work with, closing a question Conor Murphy had left open a fortnight earlier. Only Sinn Féin or the DUP can collapse the joint First Minister office, so the denial gives up the party's own leverage in budget talks.
Scottish Labour
Scottish Labour
Michael Marra, Joe Fagan and Monica Lennon declared for the Scottish Labour leadership, but each needs nine endorsements from MSPs, MPs and unions before members vote, with nominations closing 17 August. Lennon, the only woman standing, says the threshold favours a male-run process and could produce an all-male ballot.
Plaid Cymru
Plaid Cymru
Plaid Cymru held both Welsh wards Reform challenged in the same set of by-elections, Bro'r Llynnoedd on Anglesey by 48.5% to 39.3% and Hengoed on Caerphilly by 49.9% to 36.4%. The party that leads the Welsh government kept Reform in second in both.
Conservative Party
Conservative Party
The Conservatives lost three of ten council by-elections fought on 30 July and 6 August, two wards to Reform in Norfolk and one to the Greens in Surrey, continuing a run of losses since the May sweep. Every seat gone had been Conservative-held going into the contest.
Reform UK
Reform UK
Reform's 56 lost councillors since May came from defection, suspension and resignation, not lost votes, while the party gained three of ten council by-elections and finished second in four more over the same fortnight. That record undercuts reading the churn as electoral retreat.
Democratic Unionist Party
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.